Hypotheses:
The study that the researchers are focused on is the experience of feeling and reacting to sadness and anger towards a normal everyday problem is influenced by age differences in emotion control. In the experiment, the researchers expect that age differences in the experience of anger versus sadness would have younger people reporting more anger and older adults reporting more sadness. They also predicted that older adults would adopt more passive emotion-regulation strategies than younger adults. Therefore, older adults would use less proactive strategies to regulate emotion.
Participants:
The researchers recruited at most 100 people, men and women, in three distinct categories. They were broken up into young adults, middle-aged adults, and older adults. About two-thirds were Caucasian and the rest minorities.
Results:
The researchers found from their results using a 4X2 multivariate analysis that contrary to their hypothesis, younger adults experienced more sadness than older adults. In support of their hypothesis though, they found that older adults reported less anger than the younger age groups, including middle age adults. The finding also showed that older individuals used more emotional regulation strategies than younger individuals. The researchers concluded this by using a model that pertained to an interpersonal and financial problem the individual would go about solving. Also, they found a significant coefficient between anger and proactive strategy use when controlling age. The researchers finally concluded that the reason why older people are better at emotional regulation strategies is because they regulate their anger better.
Discussion:
This article is related to Psychology 101 involving the lecture on emotion and motivation. This study shows how emotion could play a role with age. It relates how certain emotions can be regulated over time by being...