Saturday, September 7, 2024
9/7/2024
Project Summary With age, individuals are often faced with more negative life events, such as declining health or the death of a loved one. But, older adults tend to report better emotional well-being than younger adults (e.g., more positive affect, greater happiness), and older adults show a greater attention to and appreciation for positive information relative to negative information compared to younger adults. These differences suggest that basic cognitive and emotional processes may change in older age, becoming more positive in general. However, most of the existing evidence regarding these age differences is based on self-report measures and lab-based tasks. Thus, it is uncertain whether these age differences are observable in the “real-world.” Furthermore, the reasons for age differences in emotional well-being or appreciation for positive information are unclear. The proposed project is a feasibility study in which an innovative behavioral assessment will be utilized to test whether age differences in emotional well-being and appreciation of positive information can be captured in natural, everyday social environments. Furthermore, a behavioral assessment of present moment time perspective will be tested as a possible mechanism underlying age differences in emotional well-being and appreciation for positive information. An adult life-span sample (N =120; 40 young adults, 40 middle-aged adults, and 40 older adults) will be recruited to wear a digital recording device for four days (two week days and two weekend days), recording for at least eight consecutive hours each day. Audio recordings will then be coded for emotional well-being, positivity versus negativity, and time perspective. Older age is expected to be related to better emotional well-being. That is, older adults' conversations are expected to contain more behavioral indicators of positive mood (e.g., laughter, calmness). Older age is also expected to be associated with greater emphasis on positive than negative information, as indexed by a greater proportion of positive conversation content than negative content. Finally, older age is expected to be associated with greater focus on present time, rather than past or future, as indexed by conversation content and verb tense. Differential time perspective may account for age differences in emotional well-being and positivity. The proposed project will clarify whether age differences in emotional well-being and appreciation for positive information are phenomena observable in everyday life and will potentially elucidate an underlying mechanism – present time perspective. The proposed feasibility study will provide a novel, ecologically valid assessment tool of emotional well-being, positivity, and time perspective in an adult lifespan sample and will serve as the foundation for future collaboration between the team members and research on healthy aging. In particular, findings from this study may inform interventions to promote emotional well-being and subsequent mental and physical health in older adults, as well as people of all ages.
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