Emotion Regulation Use Varies Across Socioecological Levels of Pandemic Stress in Older Adults

COVID-19 escalated stress within family/neighborhood (local) and national/cultural (global) levels. However, the impact of socioecological levels of stress on pandemic emotion regulation remains largely unexplored.

Thirty older adults from the Northeast US (63-92 years) reported on pandemic stress and emotion regulation in semi-structured interviews. Responses were coded into socioecological sources of local and global stress, and associated use of cognitive emotion regulation strategies from the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire was explored.

Older adults experienced significant distress at global levels, and perception of lacking top-down safety governance may have exacerbated local distress of engaging in daily activities during the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants endorsed coping with local stressors via perspective-taking, acceptance, and other adaptive strategies, while global sources of stress were associated with greater use of maladaptive strategies, including other-blame and rumination.

Quantitative assessments may underestimate significant older adult distress and maladaptive coping toward global stressors. Findings should be replicated with more diverse populations beyond the COVID-19 context.