Abstract
Research on preferences among sequences of mixed affective events has mostly used young adults as participants. Given differences due to aging in people's ability to regulate emotion, one could expect differences due to aging in preferences for different sequences. Study 1 demonstrated ageโrelated differences in how older adults (age 65 and older) versus young adults (age 18โ25) choose to order mixed affective events that will occur over time. The tendency to choose sequences in which the final event is positive was greater among older adults versus young adults. And, more so than young adults, older adults preferred that the positive and negative events in a sequence be separated in time by a neutral event. Studies 2โ3 investigated ageโrelated differences in overall retrospective evaluations of presented sequences of mixed affective events. In contrast to young adults, older adults' retrospective evaluations were not affected by: (1) whether the final trend of the sequence improved monotonically; (2) whether the last event in the sequence was positive; or (3) the temporal proximity of positive and negative events in the sequence. Results of Study 3 suggest that these ageโrelated differences are due to differences in older (vs. young) adults' ability to regulate emotion. Copyright ยฉ 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.