Emotional responses styles and well-being ten years later: A multimodal comparison across the lifespan

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Project Summary/Abstract. Aging is often characterized by declines in physical and cognitive health. One domain that does not seem to follow this trajectory is well-being. Older age is often characterized by higher levels of well-being, or “optimal psychological functioning and experience”, a finding that has been termed the “paradox” of aging. Well-being is also related to how people respond to emotional events (i.e., emotional response styles), but the research documenting how emotional response styles relate to age is inconclusive. Self-report studies of emotional response styles and aging demonstrate better profiles among older cohorts, where age is related to smaller increases in negative affect after encountering stressors. Lab studies, on the other hand, demonstrate either no age differences in emotional response styles or less adaptive profiles with age. The existing research is limited by a focus on emotional responses to negative (and not positive) events and the initial reactivity (but not recovery) to those events. The proposed research will attempt to reconcile these mixed findings by examining how emotional response styles in adults ranging from 33 to 84 are related to concurrent and longitudinal (10 years later) well-being using a multimodal assessment of emotion. Data from the 2nd and 3rd waves of the Midlife in the United States study will be used to compare the validity of three methods of assessing emotional response styles in predicting longitudinal well-being: self-reported emotion after the occurrence of daily stressors and daily uplifts in an 8-day diary study; facial electromyography (facial EMG) indicators of emotional responses to negative and positive pictures; and activity in the amygdala and striatum while viewing negative and positive pictures during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The initial reactivity to the emotional event (stressor/uplift, negative picture/positive picture) will be examined as well as the recovery from the emotional event (i.e., the time taken to return to baseline levels). The proposed project aims to investigate how individual differences in 1) negative; and 2) positive emotional response styles in daily life, facial EMG, and fMRI relate to well-being 10 years later as a function of age; and 3) Examine how interactions between age and individual differences in emotional response styles in daily life, facial EMG, and fMRI relate to change in well-being across 10 years. Training of the fellow will take place in the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and will be supported by experts in affective neuroscience, facial EMG analysis, and fMRI analysis. The training plan includes activities intended to bolster the fellow’s theoretical understanding and methodological skillset regarding the neurobiological basis of emotional response styles as well as professional development. Findings from the proposed study have the potential to inform efforts to maintain and improve emotional health and well-being as people age.