Emotional aging: Recent findings and future trends

Abstract

Contrasting cognitive and physical decline, research in emotional aging suggests that most older adults enjoy high levels of affective well-being and emotional stability into their 70s and 80s. We investigate the contributions of age-related changes in emotional motivation and competence to positive affect trajectories. We give an overview on the recent literature on emotional processing and emotional regulation, combining evidence from correlational and experimental, as well as behavioral and neuroscience studies. In particular, we focus on emotion-cognition interactions, including the positivity effect. Looking forward, we argue that efforts to link levels of emotional functioning with long-term outcomes, combining space- and time-sensitive measures of brain function, and developing interventions to improve life quality for older adults may further refine life-span theories and open promising avenues of empirical investigation.