Ethnic variation in the impact of emotion and emotion regulation on health: a replication and extension

Although emotions and patterns of emotion regulation are central to models linking personality and health, the generalizability of these models to diverse populations of older adults remains untested. In this study, 1,364 community-dwelling women (aged 50-70 years) from six ethnic groups completed self-report measures of trait anger, inhibition, defensiveness, and health. As expected, reports of trait anger and emotion inhibition predicted poorer health (and defensiveness better health), even when demographics and health behaviors were controlled. However, these characteristics related to outcome differently across ethnic groups; greater anger was related to better health in all groups other than U.S-born European Americans, and increased emotion inhibition was associated with better health among immigrant Eastern European women. Results are discussed within a contextualistic model of emotions and health, and directions for future research are given.     

Emotion complexity and emotion regulation across adulthood

This research used data from a study on daily emotional experience in adulthood to examine the associations between age, emotion complexity, and emotion regulation. Data were drawn from a study of daily stress that included 239 participants ranging in age from 18 to 89 from North Central Florida. Two indicators of emotion complexity were considered: emotion differentiation and the co-occurrence of positive and negative affect. Emotion regulation was assessed in terms of individuals’ likelihood of maintaining adaptive emotion states. There were no age differences in adults’ co-occurrence of positive and negative emotions. In contrast to theories suggesting age would be associated with greater emotion complexity, the findings revealed that older adults had lower differentiation scores than younger adults. Age was also associated with more adaptive patterns of emotion regulation. Specifically, older adults persisted in low negative states and moved out of high negative states more readily than younger adults. Finally, neuroticism, self-concept incoherence, mean daily stress, and emotion complexity were associated with emotion regulation. Notably, adults who reported a greater mix of positive and negative affect moved out of high negative affect states more rapidly than adults with lower co-occurrence scores. This finding is in keeping with a growing body of work suggesting that positive affect promotes recovery from negative affect. Overall, the findings suggest that although emotion complexity is associated with emotion regulation, it does not appear to be a key factor underlying age differences in emotion regulation.     

Ethnic variation in the impact of negative affect and emotion inhibition on the health of older adults

The relations between patterns of emotional experience, emotion inhibition, and physical health have been little studied in older adults or ethnically diverse samples. Testing hypotheses derived from work on younger adults, the authors examined the relations between negative affect and emotion inhibition and that of illness (hypertension, respiratory disease, arthritis, and sleep disorder) in a sample (N = 1,118) of community-dwelling older adults from four ethnic groups: U.S.-born African Americans, African Caribbeans, U.S.-born European Americans, and Eastern European immigrants. Participants completed measures of stress, lifestyle risk factors, health, social support, trait negative emotion, and emotion inhibition. As expected, the interaction of ethnicity with emotion inhibition, and, to a lesser extent, negative affect, was significantly related to illness, even when other known risk factors were controlled for. However, the relations among these variables were complex, and the patterns did not hold for all types of illness or operate in the same direction across ethnic groups. Implications for emotion-health relationships in ethnically diverse samples are discussed.     

Pilot study of Aurora, a social, mobile-phone-based emotion sharing and recording system

Background:Emotion is a ubiquitous aspect of humanity that governs behavior in a number of ways and is linked inextricably with health. Pausing to evaluate one’s emotional state in the face of decisions and reflecting on past patterns of emotion have been shown to improve behaviors. Further, social expression of emotion has been shown to directly improve health outcomes. While the virtual reality research community does not ignore emotion on the whole, there does exist a need to explore what roles emotional awareness and emotion sharing can play in this domain.Methods:A mobile-phone-based social emotion recording and sharing system, Aurora, was developed to provide individuals with a means to pause and evaluate their emotional state, reflect on past emotions, share emotions with others, and participate in socially supportive activities with peers. A study was conducted with 65 subjects to evaluate Aurora as a tool to encourage emotional reflection and awareness as well as social sharing of emotion.Results:Users of Aurora reported an increased comfort in socially expressing emotion and were encouraged to share emotions, even with strangers. Subjects also reported liking reflecting on their emotional state and found it valuable. Subjects’ behavior also suggested that the system encouraged individuals to reach out to one another in acts of social support.Conclusions:The Aurora system offers a tool for encouraging emotional awareness, emotion sharing, and socially supportive behavior. Such a tool could be impactful in numerous health settings where emotion is considered to be an important indicator of or influence on outcome, such as for weight loss, alcohol cessation, or cancer sufferers.     

Protective neighborhoods: neighborhood proportion of Mexican Americans and depressive symptoms in very old Mexican Americans

Research indicates that neighborhood context can have a significant effect on the health of older adults. The evidence suggests that there may be physical health benefits afforded to Mexican Americans living in ethnically homogenous neighborhoods, despite the relatively high economic risk in such neighborhoods, but few studies have considered the effect of neighborhood ethnic density on mental health outcomes in older adults. This study evaluated the association between neighborhoods with a high proportion of Mexican Americans and depressive symptoms in very old Mexican Americans. Hierarchical linear modeling was used to examine data from Wave 5 (2004/05) of the Hispanic Established Populations for the Epidemiologic Study of the Elderly. Subjects included 1,875 community-dwelling Mexican Americans aged 75 and older living in 386 neighborhoods in five states in the southwestern United States (Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas). Depressive symptoms were measured using the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (α=0.88). Results showed that, in very old men, there was a significant negative association between percentage of Mexican Americans in the neighborhood and depressive symptoms (P=.01). In women, the direction of the association was the same, but the effect was not significant. These findings suggest that the proportion of Mexican Americans in the neighborhood matter more for very old Mexican American men than women. Further research may inform screening and treatment for depressive symptoms based on differences in neighborhood composition. Recommendations include culturally customized programs that offer older Mexican Americans greater mobility and access to programs and opportunities in culturally identifiable neighborhoods.     

To the Future of Ethnogeriatric Research and Publication

The reinstatement of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society Section on Ethnogeriatrics coincides with more rapid growth in older populations that are classified as ethnic and racial minorities in the United States than those classified as non‐Hispanic white. By 2060, 40% of older Americans are predicted to belong to a minority. Important needs for ethnogeriatric research and publication include: making sure research populations are meaningful and precise rather than using categories that include many unrelated groups; and increasing research among smaller ethnic populations of older adults. Topics in need of attention include epidemiology of common geriatric illness among the smaller populations, and social determinants for those in which disparities have been established; the extent and effectiveness of use of Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services Standards in geriatric care; examination of communication strategies used in provider/patient interaction, especially use of interpreters; ethnic differences in treatment of older patients; and models of use of community health workers from older patients' own cultural communities. Stresses related to caregiving in cultures emphasizing the importance of family care are important to understand acceptable models of long‐term care for diverse families. The new Ethnogeriatric Section opens the opportunity for geriatric researchers, especially those from diverse backgrounds, to explore important issues in cross‐cultural geriatric care; their findings can then form the basis of expanded ethnogeriatric curriculum for training future providers for the growing population of diverse older Americans.     

Cultural and Gender Differences in Coping Strategies Between Caucasian American and Korean American Older People

Coping strategies have significant effects on older people’s health. This study examined whether gender and ethnic differences influence the coping strategies chosen by older adults when they encounter daily life stressors. Data were collected from 444 community-dwelling people over the age of 65, including 238 Caucasian Americans and 206 Korean Americans. Results showed significant differences between the two groups. Korean Americans had higher scores on problem and emotion-focused coping strategies as well as avoidant coping strategies than Caucasian Americans. Caucasian older women employed more active coping, planning, and positive reframing skills; relied more on religion; and sought emotional support more than Caucasian men. For Korean Americans, older women utilized religion and denial; whereas older men employed instrumental support and substance abuse. The results suggest that practitioners should develop ethnic, gender-specific programs to help older adults cope more effectively with their daily life stressors.     

Age differences in emotion recognition skills and the visual scanning of emotion faces

Research suggests that a person's emotion recognition declines with advancing years. We examined whether or not this age-related decline was attributable to a tendency to overlook emotion information in the eyes. In Experiment 1, younger adults were significantly better than older adults at inferring emotions from full faces and eyes, though not from mouths. Using an eye tracker in Experiment 2, we found young adults, in comparison with older adults, to have superior emotion recognition performance and to look proportionately more to eyes than mouths. However, although better emotion recognition performance was significantly correlated with more eye looking in younger adults, the same was not true in older adults. We discuss these results in terms of brain changes with age.     

Consciousness and emotion

This article focuses on the processes that lead to awareness of our own emotions, which deserve particular attention in contemporary models of emotional consciousness. The subjective component of emotion, or emotional experience, was for a long time the most neglected aspect in the study of emotions although it already constituted the initial point of discussion in the famous William James still asked question : What is an emotion? More than a century later, contemporary theories debate about this heritage. We examine the successive historic contributions to the question of the determinants of our own emotional experience: from James-Lange bodily changes to cognitive appraisal theories, also relating the major role that the fundamental emotions theory attributed to facial expressions. Twenty years after the debate about primacy of cognition or emotion, both physiological-somatic and cognitive components are integrated in contemporary approaches to emotions. However, their respective degree of implication varies according to the different levels of emotional consciousness which are modelized. It is on the last level that present models focus, level that leads to consciousness of our emotional experience, benefiting from the contributions of cognitive neurosciences. Models differ according to the role devoted to neuronal substrates in determining emotional experience, but they converge on the specification of a last level of consciousness, which is the only one that allows the subject to be conscious of emotion as it is experienced (feeling) and that what he is experiencing is an emotion. Then, different models of emotional consciousness account for different varieties of emotion experience and also for various cases of < unconscious > emotions, that is occurrence of emotion with a lack of awareness.     

Health concerns and expectations of Anglo and ethnic older Australians: A comparative approach

Australia is a multicultural society in which the most rapidly ageing groups are immigrants, many of whom cannot speak English well. Minimal research has been conducted to identify ethnic variation in health concerns and expectations of older Australians from non-English-speaking backgrounds, necessary to facilitate culturally appropriate services. This paper presents findings from 12 focus group sessions (4 Anglo, 3 Italian, 2 Chinese, 2 Arabic, 1 Greek) with older (60+) Australians. Common areas of concern were inadequate medication information, labelling and instructions. Anglo participants differed from ethnic participants in their use of herbal remedies, language, relationship with pharmacist and doctor and awareness of health rights. Other concerns and expectations were specific to a particular ethnic group. The findings should increase health professionals' awareness of the similarities and differences which exist between mainstream Anglo and ethnic Australians, and also between ethnic groups, thereby avoiding the use of a blanket approach when communicating with, or planning policies for, ethnic older Australians.     

Networks in later life: an examination of race differences in social support networks.

Although there has been considerable interest in the effects of social support networks on various health outcomes for older adults, there has been little research directed toward the predictors of networks. In this study, we examine race differences in the determinants of social support network characteristics (size, frequency of interaction with network members, proportion of kin, and amount of support received and given to network members) using data from an older community sample drawn from the North Carolina site of the Established Populations for Epidemiologic Studies of the Elderly (EPESE) focusing on adults sixty-five and older (n = 4124). This research focuses on the extent to which race differences in network dimensions are present and whether these variations can be attributed to varying social structural positions held by African Americans and Whites. The results indicate that several race differences persist even when controlling for social structural variables. The structural argument and future implications are discussed.     

Changes in posed facial expression of emotion across the adult life span

The purpose of this study was to examine changes in the facial expression of emotion across the adult life span. Two positive and two negative emotional expressions were posed by 30 young (21 to 39 years), 30 middle-aged (40 to 59 years), and 30 older (60 to 81 years) healthy, right-handed women. Photographs of the four emotional expressions were rated by independent judges for intensity, accuracy, and confidence. Special features of this study were the use of a neutral face as a nonemotional control, as well as careful cognitive and affective screening procedures for posers and judges. Overall, the expressions of older posers were rated as significantly less accurate and with significantly less confidence than those of younger posers. Although the neutral faces of older posers were rated as significantly more intense than those of younger posers, there were no significant age-related intensity differences for positive and negative emotions. The results are discussed in terms of theoretical models of aging.     

Effects of age and emotional intensity on the recognition of facial emotion

Older adults have a specific deficit in their ability to identify some negative facial emotions. The present study investigated the influence of intensity of expression on 40 young and 40 older adults' recognition of facial expressions of emotion. Older adults showed no impairment in the perception of low-intensity subtle expressions of happiness, surprise, and disgust. However, older adults were worse at recognizing all intensities of sadness, anger, and fear, with the greatest impairment at 50% intensity. Observed age differences were not influenced by covarying general facial processing skills, but were substantially reduced when a measure of general cognitive functioning was covaried. The current study suggests that age differences in identifying facial expressions of emotion are not caused by decreasing visual perceptual abilities, but may partially overlap with general cognitive changes.     

Blunted rostral anterior cingulate response during a simplified decoding task of negative emotional facial expressions in alcoholic patients

BACKGROUND: Alcoholism is characterized by deficits in emotional functioning as well as by deficits in cognitive functioning. However, most brain imaging research on alcoholism has focused on cognition rather than emotion. METHOD: We used an event-related functional magnetic imaging approach to examine alcoholics' brain blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) response to evaluation of emotional stimuli and to compare their response to that of nonalcoholic controls. The task used was a simplified variant of a facial emotion-decoding task in which subjects determined the intensity level of a target emotion displayed as a facial expression. Facial expressions of happy, sad, anger, disgust, and fear were used as stimuli. RESULTS: Alcoholics and controls did not differ in accurately identifying the intensity level on the simple emotional decoding task but there were significant differences in their BOLD response during evaluation of facial emotion. In general, alcoholics showed less brain activation than nonalcoholic controls. The greatest differences in activation were during decoding of facial expressions of fear and disgust during which alcoholics had significantly less activation than controls in the affective division of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). Alcoholics also had significantly less activation than controls in the affective division of the ACC, while viewing sad faces. Only to facial expressions of anger did the alcoholics show significant activation in the affective ACC and in this case, their BOLD response did not significantly differ from that of the controls. CONCLUSION: Alcoholics show a deficit in the function of the affective division of the ACC during evaluation of negative facial emotions that can serve as cues for flight or avoidance. This deficit may underlie some of the behavioral dysfunction in alcoholism.     

Predicting Ethnic Variation in Adaptation to Later Life: Styles of Socioemotional Functioning and Constrained Heterotypy

It is an axiom of social gerontology that populations of older individuals become increasingly differentiated as they age. Adaptations to physical and social losses and the increased dependency that typically accompany greater age are likely to be similarly heterogeneous, with different individuals adjusting to the aging process in widely diverse ways. In this paper we consider how individuals with diverse emotional and regulatory profiles, different levels of religiosity, and varied patterns of social relatedness fare as they age. Specifically, we examine the relation between ethnicity and patterns of socioemotional adaptation in a large, ethnically diverse sample (N = 1118) of community-dwelling older adults. Cluster analysis was applied to 11 measures of socioemotional functioning. Ten qualitatively different profiles were extracted and then related to a measure of physical resiliency. Consistent with ethnographic and psychological theory, individuals from different ethnic backgrounds were unevenly distributed across the clusters. Resilient participants of African descent (African Americans, Jamaicans, Trinidadians, Barbadians) were more likely to manifest patterns of adaptation characterized by religious beliefs, while resilient US-born Whites and Immigrant Whites were more likely to be resilient as a result of non-religious social connectedness. Taken together, although these data underscore the diversity of adaptation to later life, we suggest that patterns of successful adaptation vary systematically across ethnic groups. Implications for the continued study of ethnicity in aging and directions for future research are given.     

Reported condom use and condom use difficulties in street outreach samples of men of four racial and ethnic backgrounds

The epidemiology of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the United States has focused research attention on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered communities as well as on racial and ethnic minorities. Much of that attention has, however, been focused on specific racial and ethnic groups, and specific sexual minorities. We report on the results of a study that examined the association between condom use and partnership types among men from four major racial/ethnic groups. Self-reported data on sexual identity (homosexual, bisexual, and heterosexual) and condom use in the past three months were collected from 806 African Americans, Hispanic, Asian, and white men intercepted in public places in Houston, TX. Data indicated that condom use was lowest in African Americans and Hispanic men, bisexual men reported the highest levels of use, with heterosexual men reporting the lowest use. African Americans and Hispanic men reported generally that it was very difficult to use a condom during sexual contact, although the patterns for self-identified homosexual, heterosexual, and bisexual men varied across race/ethnicity. Homosexual African American men reported the least difficulty, and white homosexual men the most difficulty compared with heterosexual and bisexual peers. For homosexually identified men, there were considerable differences across race/ethnicity in the proportion of partners who never or rarely disagreed to use condoms, with Asians disagreeing least, and African Americans most. Within racial/ethnic groups, the levels of condom use and difficulty were similar for male and female partners, suggesting that it is sexual identity, rather than partner gender, that has impacted condom-use messages. These data suggest that racial/ethnic targeting of condom use is likely to be most efficacious in increasing condom use in men.     

Attachment styles in older European American and African American adults

OBJECTIVES: Differential attachment styles have been linked to differential emotion regulation and ability to cope with stress in samples of young adults. There are few data on attachment styles in older adults despite the fact that attachment relationships are said to play a significant role in psychological well-being throughout the life span. The goal of the study was to examine attachment patterns in older adults. METHODS: Participants were 800 community-dwelling older European Americans and African Americans (M = 74 years) living in a large urban community. Attachment measures included the family and friend intimacy subscales from the Network Analysis Profile and the Relationship Scales Questionnaire. RESULTS: In contrast to findings with younger individuals, where the majority of respondents have been found to be secure (i.e., comfortable with closeness and dependency), the majority of the present sample were found to be dismissing/avoidant (i.e., uncomfortable with closeness, compulsively self-reliant). European Americans scored higher than African Americans on attachment security, whereas African Americans scored higher than European Americans on dismissing attachment. However, the assessment of relatedness based on the Network Analysis Profile, where respondents named their closest kin, indicated that African Americans had higher scores than European Americans, though their networks were smaller. DISCUSSION: Age and ethnicity differences appear to reflect cohort effects related to the impact of economic hardship on families earlier this century and racial prejudice. The high rates of dismissing attachment and low rates of secure attachment in this large urban population suggest that these individuals may be at risk for social isolation and poor health as they become older and more frail.     

Sex and age cohort differences in patterns of socioemotional functioning in older adults and their links to physical resilience

Although the aging process brings with it some common challenges to older men and women, there has been little attention to gender differences in patterns of socioemotional functioning or their links to adaptive outcome. In this paper we examine patterns of socioemotional functioning among 687 “younger” (65–73 years) and 426 “older” (74–86 years) men and women, describe sex differences in these patterns, and examine whether the same patterns are linked to physical resilience in the same ways across groups. Cluster analysis was applied to 11 measures of socioemotional functioning with ten qualitatively different patterns emerging. As expected, men and women from our two age groups were not equally distributed across the patterns. As expected, older men more frequently manifested patterns of adaptation characterized by inhibited emotion but, together with younger men, were less likely to be represented in patterns characterized by stress-buffering friend support networks. The patterns also showed predictable links to a measure of physical resiliency, which was predicted by participant sex, and both sex and age interacted with cluster membership in predicting resiliency. Taken together, these data underscore the complexity of adaptation to later life among men and women and highlight the possibility that the existence of particular patterns of later life adaptation may have differing late life consequences for older men and women. Implications for the continued study of sex differences in adaptation to later life and directions for future research are given. Nathan S. Consedine has a faculty appointment in the Psychology Department at Long Island University and is deputy director of the Intercultural Institute on Human Development and Aging. His research training centered on evolutionary functionalism and its applications to personality and goal striving. He has since turned the ideas developed during this time to the lifespan developmental consideration of emotions, emotion regulation, and adaptive outcomes among diverse ethnic groups. She is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, the Gerontological Society of America, and the International Society of Research on Emotion. She is also the founding director of the Intercultural Institute on Human Development and Aging. The Institute is devoted to research, training, and consultation on the role of culture in health and human development. Yulia S. Krivoshekova is a research associate and project coordinator at the Intercultural Institute on Human Development and Aging and is currently in her fifth year of clinical training in the Psychology Department at Long Island University (Brooklyn). Her research is focused on the cognitive and health-related consequences of self-disclosure processes, with an emphasis on developmental differences and cultural variation.     

Greater negative affect and mixed emotions during spontaneous reactions to sad films in older than younger adults

Older adults may be better able to regulate emotion responses to negative experiences than younger persons when provided instructions, but age group differences in spontaneous emotion responses are poorly understood. The current study determined age group differences in spontaneous reactivity and recovery in negative and positive affects, as well as the co-occurrence of negative and positive affects, following a laboratory mood induction. Younger (n = 71) and older adults (n = 44) rated negative and positive affects before and several times after a negative mood induction involving sad film clips. ANCOVA and multilevel longitudinal modeling in HLM were utilized to determine age group differences in spontaneous reactivity to and recovery from the mood induction, as well as age group differences in co-occurrence of negative and positive affects. Relative to younger adults, older adults reported greater negative affect reactivity to and recovery from the mood induction. Older adults also reported greater co-occurrence of negative and positive affects in response to the mood induction, as compared to younger adults. Thus, older adults reacted more strongly to sad film clips than younger persons, exhibited efficient recovery, and reported greater co-occurrence of negative and positive affects. A fruitful line of future research might determine whether affect co-occurrence facilitates effective emotion regulation.