Emotion Judgments in Older and Younger Adults: Assessing Contributions of on-Line Experience, Recall, and Self-Concept

92 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2006.Age differences in memory performance and emotional wisdom suggest that younger and older adults differentially use emotions and the self to guide emotion judgments. Older adults (N=92) and younger adults (N=80) first completed experience sampling of emotions for one week. Then participants completed measures of memory for emotion frequency and satisfaction with the week of experience sampling immediately after the week, and after a two-week delay. Older adults reported fewer negative emotions and better memory accuracy for negative emotions. These results are partially accounted for by emotional awareness and mood variability. Older adults experienced and remembered differentially more alone situations than younger adults. Regression analyses revealed that the proposed model for emotion judgments was well supported, and age differences only emerged for negative emotions. It was concluded that expectations for emotions predicted emotional experience and memory for emotion. Satisfaction was predicted best by memory for emotions, as compared with actual experience, and negative emotion memory predicted satisfaction better than positive emotion memory. These results partially support emotional wisdom theories of the use of emotions.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD