Emotional development across adulthood:: Differential age-related emotional reactivity and emotion regulation in a negative mood induction procedure

present study examines the hypothesis that older adults might differentially react to a negative versus neutral mood induction procedure than younger adults. The rationale for this expectation was derived from Socio-emotional Selectivity Theory (SST), which postulates differential salience of emotional information and ability to regulate emotions across adulthood. The present data support a view of differential age-related effects of negative mood inductions with greater and more heterogeneous emotional reactivity among older adults, who showed a substantially greater decrease in self-rated pleasantness, calmness, and wakefulness than younger adults. Moreover, relative to the younger adults, emotion regulation in terms of mood repair was more effective among the older adults. The age-related mood effects are discussed in terms of SST and have practical implications for the study of emotion and cognition across adulthood.