Emotional experience improves with age: evidence based on over 10 years of experience sampling

Abstract

Recent evidence suggests that emotional well-being improves from early adulthood to old age. This study used experience-sampling to examine the developmental course of emotional experience in a representative sample of adults spanning early to very late adulthood. Participants (N = 184, Wave 1; N = 191, Wave 2; N = 178, Wave 3) reported their emotional states at five randomly selected times each day for a one week period. Using a measurement burst design, the one-week sampling procedure was repeated five and then ten years later. Cross-sectional and growth curve analyses indicate that aging is associated with more positive overall emotional well-being, with greater emotional stability and with more complexity (as evidenced by greater co-occurrence of positive and negative emotions). These findings remained robust after accounting for other variables that may be related to emotional experience (personality, verbal fluency, physical health, and demographic variables). Finally, emotional experience predicted mortality; controlling for age, sex, and ethnicity, individuals who experienced relatively more positive than negative emotions in everyday life were more likely to have survived over a 13 year period. Findings are discussed in the theoretical context of socioemotional selectivity theory.

Figure 1

Prototypical age trajectories for (A) positive emotional experience (frequency of positive emotions minus negative emotions), (B) emotional stability (−MSSD), and (C) poignancy (r-to-z transformed intra-person correlation between positive and negative emotion ratings).

Figure 2

Survival function over 13 years for Wave 1 participants with high versus low positive emotional experience.