Upload
others
View
6
Download
0
Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
Age Differences in the Experience of Poignancy: The Roles of Emotion Regulation and
Dialectical Thinking
ZHANG, Xin
A Thesis submitted in Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the Degree of
Master of Philosophy
in
Psychology
• The Chinese University of Hong Kong
July 2008
The Chinese University of Hong Kong holds the copyright of the thesis. Any person(s)
intending to use a part or whole of the materials in the thesis in a proposed publication
must seek copyright release from the Dean of the Graduate School.
I f T s iT ) ! ) UNIVERSITY"";^
SYSTEM^^
Thesis/Assessment Committee
Professor Catherine McBride (Chair)
Professor Helene Hoi-lam Fung (Thesis Supervisor)
Professor Michael Bond (Committee Member)
Professor Jeanne L. Tsai (External Examiner)
Age Differences ii
Abstract of thesis entitled:
Age Differences in the Experience of Poignancy: The Roles of Emotion Regulation
and Dialectical Thinking
Submitted by ZHANG’ Xin
for the degree of Master of Philosophy in Psychology
at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in June 2008
Poignancy is defined as the experience of mixed emotions resulting from
recognizing that something once possessed is no longer present. According to
socioemotional selectivity theory, when people are aware of the fmitude of time,
they tend to experience more mixed emotions. Study 1 found that in contrast to the
theory and prior western findings, Hong Kong older participants experienced a
lower level of poignancy than did younger participants when they were asked to
imagine visiting a meaningful place for the "last time". In Study 2, we found that an
emotion regulation strategy, namely cognitive reappraisal, moderated the
relationship between time manipulation and poignancy, such that older participants
who used cognitive reappraisal more were less likely to exhibit poignancy when
imaging the social ending. Moreover, dialectical thinking mediated the relationship
between age and poignancy, the age differences in poignancy was partially
attributable to younger participants having a higher level of dialectical thinking than
did older participants and those with a higher level of dialectical thinking
Age Differences iii
experiencing more poignancy when imaging the social ending. Both the theoretical
and practical implications of the finding are discussed.
Key words: poignancy, age differences, emotion regulation, dialectical thinking
Age Differences iv
摘要
悲喜交加(Poignancy)是由于意識到失去了曾經擁有的事物而產生的一種複
雜的情緒體驗0根據社會情緒選擇理論(Socioemotional Selectivity Theory),
當人們認識到時間的終結時,他們會更多的感受到這種複雜的情緒體驗。硏
究一發現,與理論以及過去一些西方硏究相反’當要求被試(participants)想
象最后一次去某個對他們來說有個人意義的地方時,相比于年輕人,香港老
年人較少感受到這種悲喜交加的復雜情緒。硏究二發現,認知重評(cognitive
reappraisal )這一情緒調節( e m o t i o n regulation ) 策 略 起 到 了 調 節 作 用
(moderation):當想象結束的情境時,更多使用這種策略的老年人會更少感
受悲喜交加的複雜情緒。另外,辯證思維(dialectical thinking)起到了中介作
用(mediation),思維更加辯證的被試會比較多的感受悲喜交加的複雜情緒。
這一發現對于理論硏究和實際應用都很有貢獻。
關鍵詞:悲喜交加,年齢差異,情緒調節’辯證思維
Age Differences v
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to first express my deepest gratitude to my thesis supervisor,
Professor Helene Fung, for her kind help and support, constructive and insightful
advice for my thesis. I had learned a lot from her, not only academic but also her
personality.
I would like to thank Professor Michael Bond and Professor Catherine
McBride for commenting on my thesis and giving me helpful suggestions on the
revision.
My sincere thanks go to my labmates, Daniiii Yeung, Siu Wan, Alice Lu and
Maggie Ng who gave me insightful ideas and helping in conducting the studies.
I am indebted to my dear classmates as well as all the staff in the
Department of Psychology for providing me greatest support to my study. I am
grateful to have them to share my happiness in my life. Without them, I would not
have enjoyed a fruitful and wonderful school life in the Chinese University of Hong
Kong.
Age Differences vi
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION 1
What Is Poignancy? 1
Socioemotional Selectivity Theory and Poignancy 3
Influential Psychosocial Factors 4
The Present Study 9
CHAPTER TWO: STUDY ONE 10
Method 10
Results and Discussion 15
CHAPTER THREE: STUDY TWO 23
Method 23
Results and Discussion 26
CHAPTER FOUR: GENERAL DISCUSSION 37
Theoretical Implications for Aging and Emotion 37
Practical Implications for Psychological Well-being of Older Adults 40
Limitation and Future Directions 42
References 44
Footnote 50
Age Differences vii
List of Tables
Table 1. Mean, S.D., and Range of Variables in Study 1 for Younger and Older
Participants 17
Table 2. Mixed Emotion Means and Standard Deviation by Trail and Condition for
Younger and Older Adults (Study 1) 20
Table 3. Mean, S.D., and Range of Variables in Study 2 for Younger and Older
Participants 27
Table 4. Mixed Emotion Means and Standard Deviation by Trail and Condition for
Younger and Older Adults (Study 2) 29
Table 5. Correlations between Poignancy and Emotion Regulation Strategy and
Dialectical Thinking (i.e. Contradiction) in both Younger and Older Adults 30
Table 6. Demographic variables, Age and Dialectical Thinking in Predicting
Emotional Poignancy When Facing an Ending 36
Age Differences viii
Figure Caption
Figure 1. Poignancy scores as a function of cognitive reappraisal (CR) ability in
older Hong Kong participants in Study 333
‘ Age Differences 1
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
In psychology, emotion is considered a response to stimuli that
involves characteristic physiological changes, and tends to motivate the
individual toward further activities. Emotion is a basic element in everyday
interaction across the entire human lifespan. The present study aims at
examining the co-occurrence of positive and negative emotions in both
younger and older adults, as well as the factors (moderators and mediators)
that affect the co-occurrence.
What Is Poignancy?
Imagine the scenario that you have once visited one of the most
beautiful places in the world, however, right before your leaving, you are
informed that it will be the last time that you can visit such a beautiful place.
How will you feel? First of all, you should have some sorrow caused by the
feeling of ending, while at the same time, you would continuously appreciate
the beautiful scenery as it is still there. Poignancy is such a kind of feeling,
defined as the co-occurrence of both happiness and sadness. The present study
aims at examining poignancy among younger and older Chinese adults, as
well as the moderating role of one type of emotion regulation, namely
cognitive reappraisal, and the mediating role of dialectical thinking, in
poignancy.
There is always a debate on whether we can feel both happy and sad at
the same time. Early literatures just emphasize either positive emotion or
‘ Age Differences 2
negative emotion. For example, the Circumplex model (Russell, 1980) argures
that we cannot feel two emotions that have opposite valence, such as
depression and elation at the same time; in other words, any degree of a
certain emotion is assumed to exclude its opposite emotion. Similarly, the
Positive Affect and Negative Affect Scales developed by Watson and
Tellegen (1985, as cited in Larsen, McGraw, & Cacioppo, 2001) consider
happiness and sadness to be two negatively correlated polar opposites on the
valence dimension. Only very recently, have studies revealed that both
positive and negative emotions can co-occur. For example, Williams and
Aaker (2002) found that participants felt both happy and sad after viewing
certain advertisements. Similarly, in another study, college students felt both
happy and sad on move-out day, on graduation day, and after watching the
movie Life is Beautiful (Larsen, McGraw, & Cacioppo, 2001). What's
common about the three events is a sense of anticipated ending. Indeed,
poignancy, from its origin in philosophy, is believed to be resulted from
recognizing that something once possessed is no longer present: "A feeling of
not having takes on a greater poignancy if it is a no-longer-having, a loss
(whether of something actually or almost possessed)" (Duncker, 1941, p. 418).
There are also some other similar terminologies describing this kind of
phenomenon, such as, emotion heterogeneity (Charles, 2005), discrete
emotion (Chipperfield, Perry, & Weiner, 2003), complexity of emotions (Ong,
& Bergeman, 2004). These different but close definitions all claim that people
are capable of experiencing multiple emotions simultaneously.
‘ Age Differences 3
Socioemotional Selectivity Theory and Poignancy
However, almost all prior studies on this phenomenon are correlational,
making it difficult to pinpoint exactly what gives rise to mixed emotions. To
the best of my knowledge, the only study that experimentally manipulated a
sense of ending and tested whether it elicited mixed emotions was conducted
within the framework of socioemotional selectivity theory. Socioemotional
selectivity theory (SST, Carstensen, 1995; Carstenseii et al., 1999) is a life-
span theory, which argues that the relative importance of specific types of
goals changes as a function of one's place in the life cycle. This theory
distinguishes between two different types of goals, future-oriented goals and
emotionally meaningful goals. When people perceive time as expansive, such
as when they are young, they tend to value novelty and invest time and energy
in acquiring information and expanding their horizons, which are future-
oriented goals. Yet, when facing limited future time perspectives, such as
when they are growing old and facing death, or approaching a deadline,
people will be more likely to focus on emotionally meaningful goals in order
to obtain a short-term or immediate gratification. As a result, when time is
constrained and people become progressively aware of the finitude of life,
emotional experiences become increasingly more complex. Such states are
positive given the pursuit of emotional goals, but come to entail a mix of
negative emotions because endings, by their very nature, also increase the
anticipation of last times and the negative feelings associated with it. It is
quite clear that from the perspective of SST, one behavioral manifestation of
‘ Age Differences 4
such a prioritization of emotionally meaningful goal is having more poignant
emotions (Carstensen, Pasupathi, Mayr, & Nesselroade, 2000). The first study
trying to examine the linkage between feeling of ending and poignant
emotions was conducted by Ersner-Hershfield, Mikels, Sullivan, &
Carstensen (2008), and what they found was that poignancy arise as a result of
an ending of coming to a meaningful place, in both lab and natural settings
and, the most importantly for the purpose of our study, among both younger
and older participants.
Influential Psychosocial Factors
As far as we know, all prior studies on the poignancy phenomenon
mentioned above were conducted in the United States. The studies reported in
this paper aimed at testing the cross-cultural generalizability of the
phenomenon by attempting to replicate the findings of Ersner-Herslifield,
Mikels, Sullivan and Carstensen (2008) in a Chinese sample. Two major
psychosocial factors were also investigated — emotion regulation and
dialectical thinking - to see whether they could affect the feeling of poignancy.
Emotion Regulation
One factor that may influence the relationship between time
perspective and poignancy is emotion regulation. Lutz (1988) asserted that, "a
study of emotion expression is also a study of the moral, cultural, and political
life of a people and can yield anthropological knowledge about the social
structure and cultural values that are reproduced and negotiated in the
‘ Age Differences 5
communication of emotions." Testing the poignancy phenomenon in a culture
very different from the American culture can clarify whether the observed
phenomenon is indeed about human development (i.e., anyone facing an
ending is more likely to experience mixed emotions) or is just a culture-
specific way of expressing emotions among the Americans. It is obvious that
cultural differences have a greater influence on the assessment of emotions
than they do on abilities and achievement because emotions are more
subjective and less clearly defined (Anastasi, 1988, as cited in Spielberger,
2006). For example, Western European values such as independence and self-
assertion encourage open emotion expression in most situations, while
constraining the use of emotion suppression to primarily self-protective acts of
withdrawal in the face of social threats (Tsai & Levenson, 1997; Wierzbicka,
1994). In a study conducted by Butler, Lee, and Gross (2007),they found that
East Asian values such as interdependence and relationship harmony might
encourage suppression equally in most social interactions, rather than
constraining it to relatively self-protective purposes; At the same time, East
Asian cultures may encourage suppression in circumstances where there is a
concern about hurting someone else and in an effort to preserve relationships
(Wierzbicka, 1994). Another study concerning culture differences in
expressing emotions found that minorities in the United States, including
Asian Americans, reported higher levels of habitual suppression than did
Caucasians (Tsai & Levenson, 1997). Asian Americans, as compared to their
Caucasian counterparts, reported higher levels of suppression, which involves
‘ Age Differences 6
a perceived discrepancy between inner feelings and outward expressions
(Gross & John, 1998, 2003). As a typical Eastern Asian culture, the Chinese
culture has a strong Confucian heritage that stresses the importance of "the
fundamental moral idea of moderation, balance and subtleness" (deBary,
Chan, 8l Watson, 1960, p.l 17). This heritage leads Chinese to hold stronger
beliefs than Westerners that it is important to control both internal and
external emotional states (e.g. Chiu and Kosinski, 1994).
Other than the cultural differences mentioned above, Gross et al (1997)
also suggested that aging is associated with improvements in the capacity to
regulate emotions, and better at expressing less negative emotions. For
example, Phillips and colleagues (2006) found that older adults expressed
anger outwardly less often, and reported more inner control of anger
compared with their younger counterparts. In other words, they decreased
their level of emotion complexity and only focus one aspect of emotion, i.e.
the positive emotions. In Gross's (1998) model of emotion process, two kinds
of emotion regulation strategies are defined, the antecedent-focused emotion
regulation strategy and the response-focused emotion regulation strategy. The
antecedent-focused emotion regulation can help individuals to avoid the
experience and behavioral expression of negative emotions proactively. One
important form of antecedent-focused emotion regulation is cognitive
reappraisal (Gross & John, 2003), in which an individual re-conceptualizes or
reframes the situation in order to alter the emotional impact. For example, a
wife may interpret the death of her husband as his release from pain instead of
‘ Age Differences 7
the loss of a beloved partner. The response-focused emotion regulation is
defined as inhibiting expressing the emotions outward while emotionally
aroused. No matter which form of emotion regulation strategy older adults are
better at, they can also lead them to express less negative emotions while
facing an ending/losses. Because of this, we expected that older Chinese
adults would show poignancy to a less extent than do younger Chinese adults,
and more over, emotion regulation strategies can moderate the relationship
between time manipulation and poignancy in older adults.
Dialectical thinking
Other than emotion regulation strategy, another possible influential
factor we intended to investigate in the present project is dialectical thinking,
a kind of folk wisdom in Chinese culture (Peng & Nisbett, 1999, 2000).
Dialectical thinking consists of sophisticated approaches toward seeming
contradictions and inconsistencies. Different from formal logic, i.e. the
Aristotelian logic, dialectical thinking considers contradiction and
inconsistency to be important. For example, when something bad happens, the
Chinese don't only consider it to be negative, but they also judge it as an
opportunity to improve the status quo. "For dialectically oriented individuals,
the nature of the world is such that masculinity and femininity, strength and
weakness, good and bad exist in the same object or event simultaneously"
(Spencer-Rodgers, Peng, Wang, & Hou, 2004,p. 1417). They can see both
sides of a certain being. Hence, for a dialectical thinker, two totally opposite
‘ Age Differences 8
statements can be both correct. They can accept the coexistence of good and
bad in their lives.
Dialectical thinking style influences how East Asians evaluate
themselves. In the domain of self- perception, East Asians are inclined to
acknowledge and accept contradictory (negative) appraisals of the self. For
example, Japanese do not discount self-criticism, they accept their failures as
readily as their successes, and they exhibit less cognitive dissonance in the
face of negative personality feedback (Heine & Lehman, 1997; Kitayama et
al., 1997). Spencer-Rodgers, Peng and Hon (2004) argue that these findings
may reflect a dialectical thinking style to accept both positive and negative
aspects of the self. In the affective domain, dialectical cultures may emphasize
more negative emotions or elaborate events in a more negative manner than
do Western cultures. Unlike North Americans, East Asians report
experiencing a greater balance of favorable and unfavorable emotions, in
some cases in equal proportions (e.g. Bagozzi, Wong, & Yi,1999). Spencer-
Rodgers and colleagues (2004) claimed that as dialectical thinkers can
experience greater affect balance because of the dialectical principle of
contradiction, they may expect and accept greater negativity in their lives in
general. East Asian philosophical and spiritual traditions emphasize the
transience of all things, including favorable experiences, good fortune, and
positive feelings (Bagozzi et al., 1999; Kitayama & Markus, 1999). Put it into
an emotion context, dialectical thinking means when facing something, a
dialectical thinker may focus on both its positive and negative domains, thus
‘ Age Differences 9
in turn can give rise to poignancy, or mixed emotions; in other words,
poignancy can be judged as a kind of dialectical thinking in nature. In a
particular study conducted by Schimmack, Oishi, & Diener (2002), they found
that Asian dialect culture experienced a higher level of mixed pleasant and
unpleasant emotions. Hence, as a tradition in Chinese culture, dialectical
thinking might lead Chinese participants to exhibit a higher level of poignancy
in everyday life. We predicted that there should be a positive correlation „.
between poignancy and dialectical thinking, and more importantly, dialectical
thinking may mediate the relationship between age and emotion poignancy.
For the reason that some age differences in dialectical thinking style were
reported by Kramer & Woodruff (1986) that older adults showed significantly
more acceptance of dialectical assumptions than did other age groups and at
the same time higher level of dialectical thinking could lead to higher level of
poignancy.
The Present Study
In summary, in the two studies reported below, we sought to replicate
the finding of Ersner-Hershfield and colleagues (2008) that limited future time
perspective led to increased poignancy in Chinese samples. In Study 2, we
also attempted to advance this line of research by directly testing the
moderation role of emotion regulation, and the mediation role of dialectical
thinking in the relationship between future time perspective and poignancy.
‘ Age Differences 10
CHAPTER TWO: STUDY ONE
Study 1 aimed at examining whether both younger and older Chinese
exhibited increased poignancy in the face of limited future time perspective,
like what Americans did in Ersner-Hershfield et al. (2008). Following their
experimental design, we manipulated future time perspective through guided
imagery techniques. Specifically, we randomly assigned younger and older
adults into four conditions in which they imagined going to a place that was
either emotionally meaningful or non-meaningful to them, for just another
time or for the last time. The specific experimental procedure is described
below in the method section. We expected that regardless of age, people
increased poignancy only when they imagined going to an emotionally
meaningful place for the last time, not in any of the other three conditions.
Method
Participants
Sixty Chinese younger participants (20 men, 40 women; Mean Age =
20.1 Syears, Range: 1 7 - 2 4 years), and sixty Chinese older participants (11
men, 49 women; Mean Age = 72.85, Range: 59 - 90 years) residing in Hong
Kong, China, took part in the study. Younger participants received course
credit or were paid twenty Hong Kong dollars for their participation, and older
participants were given a campus tour and a free lunch for their participation.
Materials
Age Differences 11
Participants completed a number of measures to assess demographic
variables (i.e. age, gender, marital status, and education level), physical health,
and cognitive abilities. Together, these measures provided descriptive
information and served as potential covariates in the analyses. Specifically,
the following measures were included:
Education level. Participants were asked to indicate the highest
education they have received in their lifetime (0 = never received any formal
education; 1 二 primary school level; 2 = secondary school level; 3 二 university
level; 4 = graduate school level or above).
Wahler Physical Health Inventory. (Wahler, 1973). The inventory
consists of 42 physical symptoms and problems. Participants were asked to
indicate the frequency that they were bothered by each symptom on a 6-point
scale ranging from 0 (almost never) to 5 (nearly every day). A composite
score on physical health was obtained by taking the mean of the ratings, with
higher scores indicating a subjective feeling of poorer health. Internal
consistency of the scale, as indexed by Cronbach's a, was .87.
Wechsler Digit Span Test. (Wechsler, 1997). In this test, participants
were required to repeat a string of numbers forward and backward, which was
an indicator of their short-term memory. The test has been normed for older
adults and correlates well with general intelligence.
I
‘ Age Differences 12
Category Naming Task. (Spreen & Benton, 1977). Verbal fluency was
assessed by asking participants to name as many members of the category
"animal" as they could in 60 seconds. The number of different animals they
named became an index of their verbal fluency.
Procedure
Participants first read and signed a consent form, and then completed
a demographic questionnaire in which they recorded their age, sex, marital
status and education level. For those participants, usually older participants,
who could not read or write, student helpers read aloud these materials to
them and record their answers. To eliminate variation in the experimental
induction, instructions for each scenario were recorded and played for
participants. Participants were seated in front of the computer and according
to different conditions, they were instructed to do the followings: "Think of a
place that has personal significance to you. Please think of a specific,
meaningful location that you go to with people whom you care about (the
meaningful conditions); or think of a place that does not have any personal
significance to you. Maybe it is just a place that you are familiar with but
without any meaning to you (the non-meaning conditions)." After the
participant had selected a meaningful or non-meaningflil location, the
experimenter recorded the location.
Participants were then taken through three guided imagery induction
trials. In the first trial, participants were given the following instructions:
‘ Age Differences 13
"Please close your eyes. Now please take a moment to imagine being
at the location that you just described. As best you can, place yourself in the
location. Notice your surroundings. Notice any people whom you are with,
their faces, and voices. Take in everything that you see. Listen carefully to the
sounds of your surroundings. Take a deep breath and notice the smells.
Notice the air on your skin. Now take whatever time you need to fully
experience the sights, sounds, and smells of the environment and the overall
experience of the location. When you are ready, please open your eyes."
Upon completing this induction, all participants completed an emotion
questionnaire in which they rated the degree to which they were experiencing
each of 19 different emotions (Positive: accomplishment, amusement,
contentment, excitement, happiness, interest, joy, and pride; Negative: anger,
anxiety, boredom, disgust, embarrassment, fear, frustration, guilt, irritation,
sadness, and shame) on a 7-point scale (From 1 = "Not at all" to 7 =
"Extremely").
The second guided imagery induction trial immediately followed this
emotion questionnaire and was identical to the first trial except for that, in this
trial, participants were asked to imagine the experience of being at their
favorite location as if they were there in two months' time. After this guided
imagery induction, all participants completed the same emotion questionnaire
again.
‘ Age Differences 14
In the third guided imagery induction, participants in the control (i.e.
non-time-limited) conditions were asked to imagine the experience of being at
their favorite location as if they were there in four months' time. In the
experimental time-limited condition, however, participants were asked to
imagine the experience of being at their favorite location as if they were there
in four months' time and, importantly, as though this would be the last time
that they would be able to visit the meaningful location. After finishing this
third trial, participants completed the emotion questionnaire for the final time.
Thus, the experimental manipulation occurred during the third trial.
Right after the participants finished the guided imagery trials, a
manipulation check was followed to make sure that participants really were
affected by the guided imagery. The manipulation check contained four
statements: 1. “1 think this place has a lot of personal significance to me"; 2.
"I think that is my last time to the place"; 3. "I think I will never go to that
place anymore"; 4. "I think my experience in that place has almost gone".
Participants were asked to rate the degree to which they agreed with those
four statements on a 7-point scale (From 1 = "strongly disagree" to 7 =
"strongly agree"). The rating on the first statement was taken as a measure of
the emotional meaningfulness of the place to the participants while the
average rating on the other three statements was taken as a composite index of
perceived future time perspective limitation in respect to that particular place.
‘ Age Differences 15
Finally, all participants completed a series of tasks and questionnaires,
including the Digit-Span task (Wechsler, 1997),the Verbal Fluency task
(Spreen & Benton, 1977), the Wahler Physical Health Inventory (Wahler,
1973). Our procedure was identical to that of Ersner-Hershfield et al. (2008),
with two exceptions. Ersner-Hershfield et al. (2008) did not include any
manipulation check in their studies; we, in contrast, included manipulation
checks to ensure that our results could not be explained by the methodological
failure of the experimental manipulation. Moreover, whereas Ersner-
Hershfield et al. (2008) did not include the condition about going to a non-
meaningful place for just another time, we included it to provide a design to
that fully crossed time limitation (going to the place for the last time or not)
and the emotionally meaningfulness of the place (i.e., whether the time
limitation was self-relevant and thus might demand emotion regulation or not).
Results and Discussion
Preliminary analyses
First of all, the manipulation check indicated that the manipulation was
effective. As expected, regardless of age, participants who imagined a location
of personal significance indeed rated the place as being more emotionally
meaningful to them {M = 6.30, SD = .98) than did those who imagined a
familiar location of no personal significance (M = 3.55, SD = 1.82), ^ (118)=
10.318, p < .01. Moreover, regardless of age, participants who imagined going
to the location just another time perceived future time perspective as being
‘ Age Differences 16
less limited {M = 2.24, SD = 2.00) than did those who imagined going to the
location for the last time (M=3.65, SD= 2.22), / (118) = 3.199,/? < .01.
Younger participants had significantly higher education level than did
older participants, / (118) = 11.983, p < .01. The Wahler measure of physical
health showed that younger and older participants were not significantly
different in their self-reported physical health, ? (118) = 1. 34, n.s. On the
cognitive tasks, younger participants named significantly more animals in the
"animal" verbal fluency task than did older participants, t (118) = 2.45,/?
=.016. Younger participants also performed significantly better in the forward
digit-span task, t (118) =6.44’ p < .01, and the backward digit-span task, f (118)
=9.56, p< .01, than did older participants. Table 1 depicts the descriptive
statistics for these measures. Statistically controlling for these variables in the
analyses did not affect the results described below.
Age Differences 17
Table 1
Mean, S.D., and Range of Variables in Study 1 for Younger and Older Participants
~ ~ ~ Young Old
(A^=60) (TV =60)
Mean S.D. Range Mean S.D. Range
Age 20.18 1.50 17-24 72.85 6.79 59-90
Gender (Male) 33% 18%
Education Level * 3.03 .18 3-4 1.00 1.30 0-4
Digit Span
Forward * 9.78 1.47 6-14 7.83 1.82 4-15
Backward * 7.25 1.87 2-11 3.70 2.18 1-13
Verbal Fluency
Animal * 15.00 2.66 9-24 13.12 5.34 2-27
Wahler Physical ,。, 川 0.02 ^q 0.02 Symptoms 丨力丨 .48 _ 2.02 .68 -3.02 Happiness at first 4 97 [61 1-7 5.18 1.52 1-7 trial
Sadness at first trial 2.52 1.60 1-7 1.97 1.46 1-7
Happiness at second ^ ^^ 1.60 1-7 5.33 1.41 1-7 trial Sadness at second 2 63 1.51 1-6 2.15 1.79 1-7 trial Happiness at third 392 1.53 1-7 5.35 1.40 1-7 trial
Sadness at third trial 3.37 1.99 1-7 2.05 1.58 1-7
Note. For each variable, * denotes significant age differences a tp < .05.
‘ Age Differences 18
Computing Emotional Poignancy
Different literatures used different formula to produce an index of
emotional poignancy, for example, Carstensen et al. (2000) computed, for
each participant, a Pearson's r correlation between positive and negative
emotion ratings across 35 sampling occasions; Chipperfield et al. (2003)
counted the frequency of different emotions in each participant's self-report,
and add them all up as an indicator of discrete emotion. However, these
methods are not suitable or appropriate for the present study either because the
sample size of the present study is not large enough to conduct the Pearson's r
correlation or because counting frequency of different emotions cannot fully
represent the definition of poignancy (i.e. happiness and sadness at the same
time). Hence, we adopted Ersner-Hershfield and colleagues' (2008) formula:
ME = Mill (Happiness, Sadness)
Index of mixed emotions (i.e. poignancy) was the minimum value between
scores of happiness and sadness. Thus the range of poignancy was one to
seven, with one referring to the absence of poignancy and seven to the highest
level of poignancy. This index only modestly correlated with the intensity of
positive and negative emotions in each trial (from .529 to .589). Moreover, in
study 2, we found that this index yielded the same pattern of results as a direct
question asking participants to rate the 'bittersweetness' of their emotions.
Emotional Poignancy in the Face of Limited Future Time Perspective
‘ Age Differences 19
A repeated-measures ANOVA with two between-subjects factors (Age
Group: young, vs. old; Condition: meaningful control, meaningful
experimental, non-meaningful experimental, vs. non-meaningful control) and
one within-siibjects factors (Trial: first, second vs. third imagery induction
trial) was conducted to test whether changes in poignancy across trials
occurred in each condition for each age group. The Trial x Condition x Age
Group three-way interaction was significant, F (6, 224) = 2.222, p = .042,
indicating that different age groups responded to the limited time
manipulation differently. To elucidate this interaction, we re-ran two
separated repeated-measures ANOVA with Condition as the between-subject
factor, and Trial as the within-subject factor, for each age group. The results
showed that the interaction of Trial x Condition was significant for younger
participants, F (6 , 112) = 5.098, p < .01, but not for older participants, F (6,
112) =.910, U.S. Furthermore, a simple repeated-measure ANOVA with Trial
as the within-subject factor among the younger adults was conducted to
investigate which condition gave rise to poignancy. The only significant main
effect was found in the meaningful experimental condition, F (2, 28) = 8.510,
p < .01. In this condition, the level of mixed emotions (i.e. poignancy) in the
third trial was significantly higher than those of the previous trials, as indexed
by the test of within-subjects contrasts, F ( l , 14) = 9.213,p < .01. None of the
other tests were significant. Table 2 shows the descriptive statistics for these
measures.
Age Differences 20
Table 1
Mixed Emotion Means and Standard Deviation by Trail and Condition for Younger and Older Adults (Study 1)
Younger Older M {SD)
Trial 1 Trial 2 Trial 3 Trial 1 Trial 2 Trial 3
Meaningful 2 .20 1.67 1.80 2 .20 2 .93 2 .13 control (1 .42) ( .82) (1 .08) (1 .37) (2 .09) (1 .36)
Meaningful 1.80 2 .87 3 .40 1.67 1.80 2 .07 experiment* (1 .15) (1 .46) (1 .30) (1 .23) (1 .26) (1 .62)
Non-meaningful 2 .07 2 .00 1.93 2 .07 1.87 1.93 control (1 .10) (1 .00) (1 .10) (1 .53) (1 .68) (1 .87)
Non-meaningful 2 .73 2 .33 2 .20 1.60 1.60 1.73 experiment (1 .28) (1 .11) ( .94) (1 .12) (1 .12) (1 .16)
Notes. Standard deviations are in parentheses.
For both Younger and Older groups, TV = 15 in each condition
* denotes significant Trial x Age interaction a tp < .05.
‘ Age Differences 21
These findings suggested that, only younger Chinese showed increased
emotional poignancy in the face of limited future time perspective; older
Chinese did not. Further analyses revealed that while younger participants in
the meaningful time-limited condition decreased the level of positive
emotions and increased the level of negative emotions in the third trial, the
levels of both positive and negative emotions of older participants in the same
condition were stable across trials'. It seemed like older participants did not
show any changes in emotions in the face of future time perspective limitation
even though the manipulation checks suggested that these older participants
indeed perceived the situation as an emotionally meaningful ending. It should
also be noted that such a null effect was not attributable to older participants
having already exhibited a high level of poignancy at the onset of the study.
As shown in Table 2, older and younger participants exhibited similar levels
of poignancy in the first trial in almost all conditions.
These findings were in contrast to the prediction of socioemotional
selectivity theory (Carstensen, 1995; Carstensen et al., 1999) that individuals,
particularly older adults, exhibit a higher level of poignancy in the face of
endings as a form of emotion regulation. Such an inconsistent pattern is
particularly worth noting given the cross-cultural findings that Chinese, as a
cultural group, both value and are better at emotion regulation than are
Americans (e.g. Chin and Kosinski, 1994; deBary, Chan, and Watson, 1960;
Russell and Yik, 1996). Our findings suggest that a perceived future time
limitation does not heighten the motive of emotion regulation for everyone.
‘ Age Differences 22
Those who are good at emotion regulation to begin with may not find the
perceived time limitation emotionally demanding and thus do not change their
emotional experiences accordingly. We argue that older Chinese, unlike their
American counterparts, are not emotionally affected by perceived time
limitation because they are better at antecedent-focused emotion regulation
such as cognitive reappraisal. They do not perceive the situation as demanding
emotional poignancy and thus do not exhibit it. Younger Chinese, being less
experienced at antecedent-focused emotion regulation (John, & Gross, 2004)
and being socialized to a lesser extent by the Chinese culture, do not enjoy
this benefit. Study 2 was conducted to test this explanation. At the same time,
although the results were in contrast to our hypothesis of the effect of
dialectical thinking on poignancy such that older adults exhibited a lower
level of poignancy when facing an ending, we still decided to test the
mediating role of dialectical thinking in affecting the relationship between age
and poignancy, seeking to get a comprehensive understanding of this
phenomenon.
‘ Age Differences 23
CHAPTER THREE: STUDY TWO
In study 1, we found that the meaningful ending condition could give
rise to the experience of poignancy, but only in younger Chinese, not older
Chinese. Study 2 sought to test whether the null effect among older Chinese
could be moderated by cognitive appraisal, which is an antecedent-focused
emotion regulatory strategy. We also examined the mediating role of
dialectical thinking style in the relationship between age and poignancy. We
first predicted that among older Chinese with a lower level of cognitive
appraisal, the typical socioemotional selectivity phenomenon regarding
poignancy would emerge (i.e., these adults would show an increase in
poignancy in the face of a perceived time limitation). However, we predicted
that such a phenomenon would not occur among older Chinese with a higher
level of cognitive reappraisal. Secondly, as a traditional thinking style in
Chinese culture, dialectical thinking was hypothesized to mediate the
observed age differences. More specifically, increased age might associate
with higher level of dialectical thinking and those who think more
dialectically would show higher level of poignancy, while those who think
less dialectically would no show such tendency.
Method
Participants
Fifty-eight younger Chinese participants (26 men, 32 women; Mean
Age = 19.69 years, Range: 1 7 - 2 4 years), and fifty-eight older Chinese
‘ Age Differences 24
participants (22 men, 36 women; Mean Age = 68.56 years, Range: 6 1 - 7 8
years) residing in Hong Kong, China, participated in the study. Younger
participants received course credit for their participation, and older
participants were paid 100 Hong Kong Dollars for taking part in the study.
Measures and Procedure
The procedure was identical to Study 1 with 2 exceptions. The first is
that in Study 2, participants were all assigned to the meaningful condition. In
other words, they were all instructed to think of a place that had personal
significance to them or a meaningful location that they went to with people
whom they cared about. Then, in the third trial, they all imagined going to this
place for the last time. And after each guided imagery trial, other than
completing the emotion questionnaire the same as Study 1, they also rated the
following item "both happy and sad at the same time" on a 7-point scale
(From 1 = "Not at all" to 7 = "Extremely"). In addition participants completed
the following 2 questionnaires:
Dialectical Self Scale (Spencer-Rodgers, Srivastava, & Peng, 2001).
Based on the theoretical conceptualization of dialectical thinking, the scale
was composed of three factors: 1) contradiction (13 items, sample item:
"When I hear two sides of an argument, I often agree with both"), 2) cognitive
change (11 items, sample item: "I often find that my beliefs and attitudes will
change under different contexts"), and 3) behavioral change (8 items, sample
item: “I often change the way I am, depending on who I am with"). However,
‘ Age Differences 25
in the following analysis, only the first factor was used, for the reason that it
was formed based on the dialectical principle of contradiction, while the latter
two were formed based on the dialectical principle of change, which didn't fit
our research purpose. A higher score indicates the participants tend to think in
a more dialectical way. The internal consistency of the contradiction subscale,
as indexed by Cronbach's a, was .66.
Emotion Regulation Scale (Gross & John, 2003). The questionnaire
was composed of two sub-scales, namely, cognitive reappraisal (6 items)
which involves changing the way the individual thinks about a potentially
emotion-eliciting situation in order to modify its emotional impact; and
expressive suppression (4 items) which involves reducing emotion-expressive
behavior once the individual is already in an emotional state. A larger score
indicates that participants tend to use more of such regulation strategy.
Internal consistency of the two scales, as indexed by Cronbach's a, were .74
and .80 respectively.
Although the focus of our study was on the cognitive appraisal
subscale, the suppression subscale was included to further test the specificity
of the moderating effect, because it could also be the case that older adults just
didn't express their emotions publicly. In other words, should we find the
predicted moderating effect of cognitive appraisal, the inclusion of the
suppression measure would shed light on whether the effect was specific to
‘ Age Differences 26
antecedent-focused emotion regulation or emotion regulatory strategies in
general.
Results and Discussion
Preliminary analyses
The manipulation check indicated that younger and older participants
judged 1) whether the location is important/meaningful to them (Younger
participants: M = 6.38, S.D. = 0.95; Older participants: M 二 6.26, S.D. = 1.12,
((114) = .626, n.s.y, and 2) whether they are coming to that place for the last
time (Younger participants: M 二 4.55’ S.D. = 2.16; Older participants: M =
4.21, 5".A = 2.16’ / (114) = 860, n.s.) equally.
Younger participants had significantly higher education level than did
older participants, t (114) = 8.305,/; < .01. The Wahler measure of physical
health showed that younger and older participants were not significantly
different in their self-reported physical health, ; (114) = 1.50, n.s. On the
cognitive tasks, differently from Study 1, younger participants didn't name
more animals in the "animal" verbal fluency task than did older participants, t
(114) =.56, n.s. Younger participants performed significantly better in the
forward digit-span task, / (114) =9.13, p < .01, and the backward digit-span
task, ^ (114) =11.23, p < .01, than did older participants (Refer to Table 4 for
descriptive statistics of these measures). Statistically controlling for these
variables in the analyses did not affect the results described below.
Age Differences 27
Table 1
Mean, S.D., and Range of Variables in Study 2 for Younger and Older Participants
Young Old
( " = 6 0 ) ( " = 6 0 )
Mean S.D. Range Mean S.D. Range
Age 19.69 1.33 17-24 68.57 4.75 60-79
Gender (Male) 45% 38%
Education Level * 3.02 .13 3-4 1.47 1.42 0-4
Digit Span
Forward * 9.93 1.24 7-14 7.61 1.49 0-9
Backward * 7.00 1.68 3-10 3.69 1.49 0-8
Verbal Fluency
Animal 15.78 3.36 8-23 16.16 3.89 9-26
Wahler Physical � 9 9 .50 O.M 34 54 0.19 Symptoms ‘ • -2.21 -2.50 Happiness at first 5 103 2-7 5.67 1.51 1-7 trial
Sadness at first trial 2.33 1.66 1-7 1.53 1.16 1-7
Happiness at second 3 ^1 1.33 1-7 5.60 1.38 1-7 trial Sadness at second 2.38 1.66 1-6 1.47 1.06 1-6 tnal Happiness at third 3 159 1.6 5.33 1.41 1-7 tnal
Sadness at third trial 5.14 1.36 1-7 1.88 1.26 1-6
Note. For each variable, * denotes significant age differences a tp < .05.
‘ Age Differences 28
Major Analysis
First, we generally replicated what we have found in Study 1, such that
older participants did not change their levels of poignancy across trials, F (2,
114) = 2.934, n.s. Yet, younger participants showed an increase in poignancy
in the third trial when they imagined coming to a meaningful location for the
last time, F {2, 114)= 18.316,p< .01 (See table 5 for the descriptive
statistics). At the same time, the direct measurement of poignancy also
showed the same result, F(2 , 112) = 5.429,/? < .01. Table 6 depicts the
correlation between poignancy and potential influential factors in both
younger and older adults.
Age Differences 29
Table 1
Mixed Emotion Means and Standard Deviation by Trail and Condition for Younger and Older Adults (Study 2)
Younger Older (N = 58) (N = 58)
M (SD)
Trial 1 Trial 2 Trial 3 Trial 1 Trial 2 Trial 3
Meaningful 2 .24 2 .16 3 .38 1.44 1.38 1.70 experiment* (1 .54) (1 .42) (1 .50) ( .98) ( .84) (1 .02)
Notes. Standard deviations are in parentheses.
* denotes significant Trial x Age interaction a tp < .05.
Tabl
e 5
Cor
rela
tions
bet
wee
n Po
igna
ncy
and
Emot
ion
Reg
ulat
ion
Stra
tegy
and
Dia
lect
ical
Thi
nkin
g (i.
e. C
ontr
ac
Old
er a
dults
.
rr
\2.
ij.
n
1. P
oign
ancy
at f
irst
tria
l -
.672
**
.120
.0
33
2. P
oign
ancy
at s
econ
d tri
al
.399
**
- .2
11
.138
3. P
oign
ancy
at t
hird
tria
l .2
64*
.274
* “
.389
**
4. C
ontr
adic
tion
.180
.0
48
.092
-
5. C
ogni
tive
reap
prai
sal
stra
tegy
.1
57
.210
-.
135
.049
6. S
uppr
essi
on s
trat
egy
.004
.1
35
.145
.0
55
Not
es. N
umbe
rs a
bove
the
diag
onal
rep
rese
nt t
he c
orre
latio
n of
you
nger
par
ticip
ants
.
Num
bers
bel
ow t
he d
iago
nal
repr
esen
t the
cor
rela
tion
of o
lder
par
ticip
ants
.
*p<
.05,
**
/?<
.01
‘ Age Differences 31
Cognitive Reappraisal as a Moderator
Next, we performed a repeated ANOVA with two Age Group (young
vs. old) and Emotion Regulation Strategies (continuous variables: cognitive
reappraisal and suppression) as between-subject predictors and Trial (first,
second vs. third imagery induction trial) as a within-subject predictor. A
significant Trial x Age Group x Cognitive Reappraisal three-way interaction
was found,尸(2, 212) = 3.278,p = .049. However, we didn't find such
interaction in the strategy of suppression (i.e. Trial x Age Group x ; i
Suppression), F (2 , 194) = .136, n.s.
Repeating the analysis for each age group revealed a significant Trial
X Cognitive Reappraisal interaction only for the older participants, F (2, 106)
=3.735, p = .027, not for the younger participants, F (2, 106) =.936, n.s,
suggesting that older adults' poignant feeling was influenced by their
cognitive reappraisal, while younger adults didn't show such a tendency.
Older participants who had a higher level of emotion regulation showed no
change in their feelings of poignancy, F (2, 50) = .20, n.s., while those who
had a lower level of emotion regulation ability showed a significant increase
in poignancy when they were imagining coming to a meaningful location for
the last time, F (2, 60) = 5.587, p = .01 (See figure 1). These findings suggest
that cognitive reappraisal and possibly other antecedent-focused emotion
regulatory strategies as well, determines whether older adults exhibit
increased emotional poignancy in the face of limited future time perspective.
‘ Age Differences 32
Older adults who proactively regulate their emotions better might not find it
necessarily to experience emotional poignancy in the face of anticipated
endings.
‘ Age Differences 33
Older adults 2.5
I I I • • low in CR 丨 C R
Figure 1. Poignancy scores as a function of cognitive reappraisal (CR) ability in older Hong Kong participants in Study 2.
I — ‘ L
Age Differences 34
Dialectical Thinking as a Mediator
Regression analyses were conducted to examine the mediating role of
dialectical thinking in the relationship between age and emotional poignancy
ill the face of ending (i.e. the level of poignancy in the third trial). In
conducting such mediation analysis, we adopted the criteria set by Baron and
Kenny (1986). Three criteria should be met before testing any possible
mediating effects: First, the initial variable should predict the outcome; second,
the initial variable should predict the mediator; finally, the mediator should
predict the outcome variable, even after the initial variable is put in the same
model. With multiple regression analyses, we found that age (the initial
variable, dummy coded, Young == 0,Old = 1) significantly predicted the levels
of poignancy in the third trial (the outcome), P = -.503, t (106) = -3.719, p
< .01, and dialectical thinking (the mediator), P = -.469, / (106) = -3.478,p
< .01. Finally, when age and dialectical thinking were entered together in
regression to predict the levels of poignancy in the third trial, dialectical
thinking continued to predict the poignant feeling, =.297, t (105) = 3.178,/?
< .01; meanwhile the predictive effect of age was still significant, but the
magnitude was reduced, /? = -.364, t (105) = -2.654, p 二 .(H (refer to Table 7
for the more detailed model). The Sobel (1982) test for this mediation model
was z = 2.662, p < .01, indicating a significant partial mediation. Overall, the
results revealed that dialectical thinking partially mediated the linkage
between age and the feeling of poignancy when facing an ending. The finding
suggests that those who think more dialectically have a higher level of
‘ Age Differences 35
emotional poignancy when facing an ending. And older Chinese are less likely
to exhibit emotional poignancy in the face of an ending than do younger
Chinese partially because they think less dialectically.
Age Differences 36
Table 1
Demographic variables, Age and Dialectical Thinking in Predicting Emotional Poignancy When Facing an Ending
P Block 1 Gender 0.180*
Education Level -0.061 Health 0.101 Animal Naming Task 0.019 Digit Span-forward 0.055 Digit Span-backward -0.067 Poignancy at Trial 1 0.050 Poignancy at Trial 2 0.139
AR^ 0.266 Fchange 4.847**
Block 2 Dialectical Thinking 0.297** AR^ 0.102
厂change 17.079** Block 3 Age Group (Older = 1, Younger = 2) -0.364*
AR" 0.040 change 7.045*
A^o/e. * p < . 0 5 , * * p < . 0 1
‘ Age Differences 37
CHAPTER FOUR: GENERAL DISCUSSION
In the two studies reported here, we examined whether perceived
limited time led to the emotional experience of poignancy. Results indicated
that such an effect occurred among younger but not older Chinese, and only
when the location that the individuals were about to leave was emotionally
meaningful. Our findings are consistent with Cacioppo and colleague's
argument that mixed emotions can and do occur (Cacioppo & Berntson, 1994;
Cacioppo, Gardner, & Berntson, 1999) and partially replicated the finding of
Ersner-Hershfield et al. (2008) that increased emotional poignancy occurred in
the face of an emotionally meaningful ending.
Theoretical Implications for Aging and Emotion
One of the most important findings from our studies is that older
participants who have a higher tendency to regulate their emotions proactively
with cognitive reappraisal did not show increased poignancy even under
emotionally meaningful perceived time limitation. Studies have consistently
demonstrated that compared with Westerners, Chinese have a higher base rate
of emotional control (e.g. Ching & Fung, 2004). In addition, studies from the
adult development literature have revealed that older adults use emotional
regulatory strategies, particularly antecedent-focused emotional regulatory
strategies, more often and perhaps more effectively than do younger adults
(Gross et al., 1997; Lawton, Kleban, Rajagopal, & Dean, 1992). These age
differences might occur due to older adults' richer life history (Schulz, 1982)
, ._
‘ Age Differences 38
and the accumulated experience with situations that potentially evoke negative
emotions (Kunzmann, Kiipperbusch, & Levenson, 2005). They might also be
due to age-related changes in motivation (e.g. a greater focus on positive
emotions) and cognition (e.g. Carstensen & Mikels, 2005). Chinese older
adults seem to have benefited from both of these mechanisms such that they
are able to regulate their emotions proactively to minimize the effects of
endings on their emotional experience. It is probably because of this reason
that aging individuals in China, unlike their American counterparts, manage to
maintain a higher level of emotion well being (Fung, Ching, & Yeuiig, 2007)
without engaging in emotional poignancy even in the face of endings. Future
studies should explore the exact role of emotion regulation in handling future
time limitation. While socioemotional selectivity theory (Carstensen, et al.,
1999) may be correct that perceived future time limitation heightens the
motive for emotion regulation for some individuals, leading to emotional
poignancy. It may also be the case that other individuals who are good at
antecedent-focused emotion regulation do not react to perceived time
limitation with emotional poignancy, simply because they have other means to
maintain their emotion well being.
The finding of the mediation role of dialectical thinking also partially
supports our hypothesis that those who are high in dialectical thinking showed
higher level of poignancy, which is consistent with Schimmack, Oishi, &
Diener's (2002) finding that Asian dialectic thinking affects the relation
between pleasant and unpleasant emotions, which might be the case that Asian
r
‘ Age Differences 39
dialectical thinking style considers pleasant and unpleasant emotions not to be
mutually exclusive, which renders it less likely that magnitude of sadness are
contrasted with magnitude of happiness (Schimmack et al. 2000). Instead,
people with higher dialectical thinking can rely on their own absolute
estimates of emotion magnitude to rate both happiness and sadness at a high
level. As a result, a dialectic way of thinking can possibly make people think
about the pleasant and unpleasant aspects of emotional experiences at the
same time, unlike the Western styles of thinking which tend to emphasize one
aspect while ignore the other. In the present study, this kind of thinking style
might have made the participants rate both the happy and sad feeling equally
high, leading to a higher poignancy score.
One question remained unsolved is the negative correlation between
age and dialectical thinking found in our study. Some literatures (e.g. Kramer
& Woodruff, 1986) suggested that older adults showed significantly more
acceptance of dialectical assumptions than did other age groups. However, we
found that older adults thought less dialectically than did younger adults, this
discrepancy in findings may be due to different methodologies. For example,
previous studies measured dialectical thinking using the Social Paradigm
Belief Inventory (SPBI) developed by Kramer and colleagues (1992), which
asked participants to choose the most appropriate statement (of their own
thinking) from 3 statements, representing absolute, relativistic and dialectical
assumptions respectively. One sample item of dialectical assumption in SPBI
is "change comes neither from the inside nor the outside. It comes from an
‘ Age Differences 40
interaction of natural changes the person goes through with changes in the
environment and how these changes are seen by the person." On the other
hand, there are still some other findings suggesting that older adults might
tend to think in a direct manner and less likely to be influenced by the
opinions of others (Pasupathi, 1999). This might have made them think less
dialectically.
Practical Implications for Psychological Well-being of Older Adults
From the conceptualization of poignancy, negative feeling is always
embedded in positive feeling. Several researchers have asserted that subjective
well-being positively correlates with pleasant emotions and negatively with
the unpleasant emotions. In other words, the rating of pleasant and unpleasant
emotions is an important indicator of subjective well-being (Diener, 1984;
Diener, Sandvik, & Pavot, 1991; Diener, Smith, & Fujita, 1995). A higher
level of poignancy can probably be associated with lower subjective well-
being when imaging an ending in a meaningful location, which is especially
harmful to older adults. For example, the age-related positivity effect
(Caitensen & Mikels, 2005; Mather & Carstensen, 2005) suggests that in
order to maintain a higher level of subjective well-being, older adults
selectively focus on more positive emotion and avoid negative emotions. In
the present study, older participants with a higher level of cognitive
reappraisal didn't show increased poignancy level in the face of ending, which
suggests that this kind of antecedent-focused emotion regulation strategies
[
‘ Age Differences 41
such as cognitive reappraisal can protect older adults against the emotional
turmoil associated with ending. Moreover, as ending may be unavoidable in
old age, programs aimed at enhancing the well-being of older adults could
emphasize training older adults to use cognitive reappraisal emotion
regulation strategy, which means when facing some unpleasant situation,
well-trained older adults could try to think about the situation in a way that
they don't feel anything at all (Gross, 1998). For example, when being
offended by someone and feeling totally angry, people who are good at
cognitive reappraisal could re-think it as a careless mistake which could help
to reduce their level of anger.
Likewise, literatures also suggest that Chinese score lower on
measures of optimism than do Americans, in part, because they perceive both
positive and negative events as pervasive and enduring (Lee & Seligman,
1997). Dialectical thinking can make their judgments of global life
satisfaction to be lower than those of synthesis-oriented cultures, which may
lead to more ambivalent well-being ratings among East Asians. In the present
studies, older adults reported a lower level of dialectical thinking, suggesting
that they only focus on one aspect, probably the positive side, of a certain
event. From this angle, avoiding dialectical thinking could be regarded as an
adaptive strategy to promote their well-being in the older population. This is
only our suspicion, and in the future, it might be a good idea to examine the
relationship between poignancy, emotion regulation, dialectical thinking and
subjective well-being directly.
I N
Age Differences 42
Limitations and Future Directions
Poignancy is defined as co-occurrence of happiness and sadness, and
by this definition, the two emotions should be positively correlated. In fact,
prior studies have found a positive correlation between negative and positive
affects in situations of emotional poignancy (for example, Bagozzi, Wong &
Yi, 1999; Scollon et al., 2005). However, we did not replicate these findings
in the present studies. We found a significant negative correlation between
positive and negative emotions in Study 1, r(14) = -.78, p = .01., and Study 2,
r(57) = -.36, p = .005, even among younger participants who showed
significant increases in poignant feelings in the face of limited future time
perspective. Future studies should examine whether this finding is attributable
to our specific population, Chinese adults, or to the fact that sadness simply
took the place of happiness, or more generally, negative affect replaced
positive affect, in the face of endings.
Secondly, previous studies (Carstensen et al., 2000; Charles, 2005;
Levenson, et al., 1991) have revealed that older adults experience poignant
states or emotional complexity more often than do younger adults, but in this
sample we didn't find this trend in any of the two studies. One possible
explanation may lie in the nature of the guided imagery technique. Many
clinical studies have asserted that guided imagery is able to create mental
images that bring about a state of focused concentration, which in turn, allows
relaxation and produces a sense of physical and emotional wellbeing (Tusek et
叫 -
‘ Age Differences 43
al., 1997). In present study, the guided imagery trial might have helped the
participants to relax, making it unlikely for them to experience intense
positive or negative emotions. Future studies should be conducted to examine
this phenomenon in more natural settings, such as graduation day, moving out
day (Larsen et al., 2001), or the day before the end of a joyful trip.
We also acknowledge that both of the studies are cross-sectional, and
the observed age differences could be attributed to cohort effects, thus the
findings should be interpreted with caution. Moreover, the health of our older
samples didn't differ much from that of the younger samples, as indicated by
the Wahler Physical Symptoms Inventory (Wahler, 1983). This might suggest
that our older samples are not representative of the general older population.
Although this sampling bias is very common in aging literature (e.g. Fung, &
Carstensen, 2003; Lockenhoff & Carstensen, 2007) our findings should be
interpreted with this limitation in mind.
Despite the limitations mentioned, findings from the present studies
show that older adults, especially those who have a high tendency to regulate
their own emotions proactively, do not show increased emotional poignancy
even in the face of perceived future time limitation; Moreover, this lack of
emotional poignancy may be attributable to older adults' lower tendency to
think dialectically, as compared with their younger counterparts. These
findings suggest that antecedent-focused emotion regulation, as well as
thinking style, may play important roles in helping older adults deal with
anticipated endings or losses.
‘ Age Differences 44
References
Bagozzi, R. P., Wong, N., & Yi, Y. (1999). The role of culture and gender in the relationship between positive and negative affects. Cognition and Emotion, 13(6), 641-672.
Baron, R. M., & Kenny, D. A. (1986). The moderator-mediator variable distinction in social psychological research: Conceptual, strategic, and statistical considerations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51, 1173-1182. “
Basseches, M. (1980). Dialectical schemata: A framework for the empirical study of the development of dialectical thinking. Human Development, 25,400-421.
Cacioppo, J. T., & Bemtson’ G. G. (1994). Relationship between attitudes and evaluative space: A critical review, with emphasis on the separability of positive and negative substrates. Psychological Bulletin, 115, 401 -423.
Cacioppo, J. T., Gardner, W. L. & Bemtson, G. G. (1999). The affect system has parallel and integrative processing components: From follows function. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76,839 - 855.
Carstensen, L. L. & Mikels’ J. A. (2005). At the intersection of emotion and cognition: Aging and the positivity effect. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 14, 117-121.
Carstensen, L. L. (1995). Evidence for a life-span theory of socioemotional selectivity. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 4, 151-156.
Carstensen, L. L., Fung, H. L.,& Charles, S. T. (2003). Socioemotional selectivity theory and emotion regulation in the second half of life. Motivation and Emotion, 27, 103-123.
Carstensen, L. L., Isaacowitz, D. W. & Charles, S. T. (1999). Taking Time Seriously: A Theory of socioemotional Selectivity. American Psychologist, 54, 165-181.
Carstensen, L. L.,Pasupathi, M.’ Mayr, U., & Nesselroade, J. (2000). Emotional experience in everyday life across the adult life span. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79, 644-655.
‘ Age Differences 45
Charles, S. T. (2005). Viewing Injustice: Great Emotion Heterogeneity With Age. Psychology and Aging, 20, 159-164.
Chipperfield, J. G., Perry, R. P. & Weiner, B. (2003). Discrete Emotions in Later Life. Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences, 58B, 23-34. “
Chiu, R. K., & Kosinski, F. A. (1994). Is Chinese conflict-handling behavior influenced by Chinese values? Social Behavior and Personality, 22, 81-90.
deBary, W. T.,Chan, W. T., & Watson, B. (1960). The mean. In W. T. deBary (Ed.), Introduction to Oriental civilizations: Sources of Chinese tradition (Vol. I, pp.117-121). New York: Columbia University Press.
Diener, E. (1984). Subjective well-being. Psychologica I Bulletin, 95, 542-575.
Diener, E.,Sandvik, E., & Pavot,W. (1991). Happiness is the frequency, not the intensity, of positive versus negative affect. In F. Strack, M. Argyle, & N. Schwarz (Eds.), Subjective well-being (pp. 119-139). Oxford, UK: Pergamon.
Diener, E., Smith, H., & Fujita, F. (1995). The personality structure of affect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69, 130-141.
Duncker, K. (1941). On pleasure, emotion, and striving. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, / , 391-430.
Ersner-Hershfield, H., Mikels, J. A., Sullivan, S. J. & Carstensen,L. L. (2008). Poignancy: Mixed emotional experience in the face of meaningful endings. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 94, 158 - 167.
Fung, H. L.’ Ching, B. H., & Yeimg, D. Y. (2007). Age differences in emotional regulation : findings from Western and Eastern cultures. In L. O. Randall (Ed.), Aging and the Elderly : Psychology, Sociology and Health (pp. 63 - 88). New York: Nova Science Publishers, Inc.
Gross, J. J. (1998). Antecedent- and response-focused emotion regulation: Divergent consequences for experience, expression, and physiology. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 224-237.
‘ Age Differences 46
Gross, J. J. & John, O.P. (2003). Individual differences in two emotion regulation processes: Implications for affect, relationships, and well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 348-362.
Gross, J. J. & John, O. P. (1998). Mapping the Domain of Expressivity: Multimethod Evidence for a Hierarchical Model. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 170-191.
Gross, J. J., Carstensen, L. L.’ Pasupathi, M., Tsai, J., Skoipen, C. G., & Hsu, A. Y. C. (1997). Emotion and aging: Experience, expression, and control. Psychology and Aging, 12, 590-599.
Heine, S., & Lehman, D. (1997). Culture, dissonance, and selfaffirmation. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 23, 389-400.
John, O. P. & Gross, J. J. (2004). Healthy and Unhealthy Emotion Regulation: Personality Processes, Individual Differences, and Life Span Development. Journal of Personality, 72,1301 - 1334.
Kaplan, K. J. (1972). On the ambivalence-indifference problem in attitude theory and measurement: A suggested modification of the semantic
. differential technique. Psychological Bulletin, 77,361-372.
Kitayama, S., & Markus, H. (1999). The yin and yang of the Japanese self: The cultural psychology of personality coherence. In D. Cervone & Y. Shoda (Eds.), The coherence of personality: Social cognitive bases of personality consistency, variability, and organization (pp. 242-302). New York: Guilford.
Kitayama, S., Markus, H., Matsumoto, H., & Norasakkunkit, V. (1997). Individual and collective processes in the construction of the self: Self-enhancement ill the United States and self-criticism in Japan. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 12, 1245-1267.
Kitayama, S., Mesquita, B.,& Karasawa, M. (2006). Cultural affordances and emotional experience: Socially engaging and disengaging emotions in japan and the united states. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 91, 890-903. •
Kliegel, M., Jager, T. & Phillips, L. H. (2007). Emotional Development across Adulthood: Differential Age-Related Emotional Reactivity and Emotion Regulation in a Negative Mood Induction Procedure. !nternational Journal of Aging and Human Development, 64, 217-244.
I
Age Differences 47
Kmmer’ D.’ Kalbaugh, P., & Goldston, R. (1992). A measure of paradigm beliefs about the social world. Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences, 47, 180 - 189. “
Kramer, D. A. & Woodruff, D. S. (1986). Relativistic and dialectical thought ill three adult age-groups. Human Development, 29, 280 - 290.
Kunzmann, U., Kiipperbusch, C. S.,& Levenson, R. W. (2005). Behavioral inhibition and amplification during emotional arousal: A comparison of two age groups. Psychology and Aging, 20, 144 - 158.
Larsen, J. T.’ McGraw, A. P., & Cacioppo, J. T. (2001). Can people feel happy and sad at the same time? Journal of Personality and Social 厂—o/ogy , 81,684-696.
Lawton, M. P., Kleban, M. H., Rajagopal, D., & Dean, J. (1992). Dimensions of affective experience in three age groups. Psychology and Aging, 7, 171-184.
Levenson, R. W.,Carstensen, L. L. Friesen, W. V., & Ekman, P. (1991). Emotion, Physiology, and Expression in Old Age. Psychology and Aging, 6’ 28-35.
Lutz, C. (1988). Unnatural emotions: Everyday sentiments on a Micronesian Atoll and their challenge to Western theory. The University of Chicago Press.
Mather, M., & Carstensen, L. L. (2005). Aging and motivated cognition: The positivity effect in attention and memory. Trends in Cognitive Science, 9, 496 - 502.
Ong, A. D., & Bergeman, C. S. (2004). The complexity of emotions in later life. Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences, 59B, 117-122.
Pasiipathi, M. (1999). Age differences in response to conformity pressure for emotional and noiiemotional materials. Psychology and Aging, 14’ 170 - 1 7 4 .
Peng, K. P., & Nisbett, R. E. (1999). Culture, dialectics, and reasoning about contradiction. American Psychologist, 54, 741-754.
Phillips, L. H., Henry,J. D., Hosie, J. A. & Milne, A. B. (2006). Age, anger regulation and well-being. Aging and Mental Health, 10, 250-256.
‘ Age Differences 48
Ready, R. E.,Robinson, M. D. & Weinberger, M. (2006). Age Differences in the Organization of Emotion Knowledge: Effects Involving Valence and Time Frame. Psychology and Aging, 21, 726-736.
Russell, J. A (1980). A Circumplex Model of Affect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39, 1161-1178.
Schimmack, U., Oishi, S.,& Diener, E. (2002). Cultural influences on the relation between pleasant emotions and unpleasant emotions: Asian dialectic philosophies or individualism-collectivism? Cognition and Emotion, 16, 705-719.
Scollon, C. N.’ Diener, E.,Oishi, S.,& Biswas-Diener, R. (2005). An experience sampling and cross-culture investigation of the relation between pleasant and unpleasant affect. Cognition and Emotion, 19(1), 27-52,
Sobel, M. E. (1982). Asymptotic intervals for indirect effects in stmctural equations models. In S. Leinhart (Ed.), Sociological methodology 1982 (pp.290-312). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Spencer-Rodgers, J., Peng, K., Wang, L., & Hou, Y. (2004). Dialectical self-esteem and East-West differences in psychological well-being. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 30, 1 4 1 6 - 1432.
Spencer-Rodgers, J., Srivastava, S.,& Peng, K. (2001). The dialectical self scale. Unpublished data.
Spielberger, C. D. (2006). Cross-cultural assessment of emotional states and personality traits. EuropeanPsychologist, 11, 297-303.
i I
Spreen, O., & Benton, A. L. (1977). Neurosensory Center Comprehensive Examination for Aphasia. Victoria, BC: Neuropsychology Laboratory,
; University of Victoria.
! Tang, B. W. Z. (1999). Age differences in adult cognitive complexity: The role of life experiences and personality. Dissertation-Ahstracts-Inteniational:-Section-B:-The-Sciences-and-Engineering’ 59B, 4505.
Thomsen, D. K., Mehlsen, M. Y., Viidik, A., Sommerlund, B. & Zachariae,R. (2005). Age and gender differences in negative affect - Is there a role for emotion regulation. Personality and Individual Differences, 38 1935-1946. ‘
Tsai, J. L., Levenson, R. W. & Carstensen, L. L. (2000). Autonomic, Subjective, and Expressive Responses to Emotional Films in Older and
‘ Age Differences 49
Younger Chinese Americans and European Americans. Psychology and Aging, 15, 684-693.
Tusek, D. L.’ Church, J. M., Strong, S. A., Grass, J. A. & Fazio, V. W. (1997). Guided Imagery: A Significant Advance in the Care of Patients Undergoing Elective Colorectal Surgery. Diseases of the Colon & Rectum, 40, 172-178.
Wildschut, T., Sedikides, C., Arndt, J., & Routledge, C. (2006). Nostalgia: content, triggers, functions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91, 975-993. “
‘ Age Differences 50
Footnote
‘We conducted a repeated-measures ANOVA with one between-
subjects factors (Age Group: young vs. old) and two within-subjects factors
(Trial: first, second vs. third imagery induction trial; valence: happiness and
sadness) in the meaningful experimental condition. Results revealed a
significant Time x Valence x Age Group three way interaction, F (2, 56)=
17.559, p < .01, suggesting that older and younger adults experienced happy
and sad feelings differently across times. Conducting repeated-measure
A N O V A S for each age group revealed that the Time X Valence interaction
was only significant for younger adults, F (2, 28) = 26.431, p < .01,not for
older adults, F (2, 28) = .08, n.s. Younger adults showed a significant increase
in sadness and decrease in happiness when they were imagining coming to a
meaningful location for the last time, while older adults didn't.
I
; m . _
霞
• m m m
CUHK L i b r a r i e s ;
i i i i i i i 004546662