Aging and Emotion Regulation Tactics Across the Historical Events of 2020

Despite well-documented cognitive and physical declines with age, older adults tend to report higher emotional well-being than younger adults, even during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. To understand this paradox, as well as investigate the effects of specific historical contexts, the current study examined age differences in emotion regulation related to the events of 2020 in the United States. We predicted that, due to older adults' theorized greater prioritization of hedonic goals and avoidance of arousal, older adults would report more positivity-upregulation and acceptance tactics than younger adults.

Eighty-one younger adults (aged 18-25) and 85 older adults (age 55+) completed a retrospective survey on their emotion regulation tactic usage for 3 specific events: the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, the killing of George Floyd, and the presidential election.

Older adults tended to rely most on acceptance-focused tactics, while younger adults tended to rely on a more even variety of tactics. However, age differences in tactic preferences varied by event, possibly due to younger adults' greater emotion regulation flexibility.

Older adults' higher emotional well-being may not be primarily a result of age differences in positivity-related emotion regulation tactics but more about differences in acceptance use.