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A recent study reveals that accumulated life knowledge helps adults manage their emotions across a variety of situations, while the ability to process new information quickly is primarily helpful for reducing negative feelings. Older adults exhibited more difficulty dampening negative emotions like disgust and sadness compared to younger adults, but they maintained the ability to boost positive emotions. The research was published in the journal Emotion.

As people age, their cognitive abilities undergo distinct changes. Some mental skills decline, while others remain stable or even improve. Researchers divide these mental abilities into two broad categories known as fluid cognition and crystallized cognition.

Fluid cognition refers to the brain’s ability to access, process, and manipulate information in real time. It encompasses processing speed, working memory, and the capacity to shift attention quickly. This type of mental agility tends to peak in early adulthood and slowly declines as people get older.

Crystallized cognition represents the knowledge and skills a person acquires over a lifetime. It includes vocabulary, reading comprehension, and an understanding of social situations. Unlike fluid cognition, crystallized cognition generally remains stable or continues to grow well into older adulthood.

Psychologists have sought to understand how these shifting cognitive resources affect emotion regulation. Emotion regulation is the process by which individuals influence which emotions they have, when they have them, and how they experience and express these feelings. Successfully managing emotions is tied to overall psychological health and life satisfaction.

The research team, led by psychologist Claire M. Growney of Stanford University, alongside David A. Balota and Tammy English of Washington University in St. Louis, investigated how aging and cognitive abilities relate to emotion regulation. They wanted to see if older adults rely on their acquired knowledge to regulate emotions or if declines in fluid cognition make certain emotional situations harder to manage.

Prior research often focused on how people reduce negative feelings. This study expanded that focus to include how people amplify or maintain positive feelings. The researchers aimed to identify the conditions under which age-related advantages or vulnerabilities in emotional management emerge.

To explore these questions, the research team recruited 286 adults ranging in age from 25 to 85. The participants lived in the St. Louis, Missouri, area and represented a diverse cross-section of socioeconomic backgrounds. None of the participants exhibited signs of cognitive impairment or dementia.

The participants first completed a standard battery of tests to assess their cognitive abilities. They engaged in tasks that measured their processing speed, cognitive flexibility, and memory to establish a fluid cognition score. They also completed reading and vocabulary tests to establish a crystallized cognition score.

Next, the participants took part in a laboratory emotion regulation task. They sat alone at a computer while a camera recorded their facial expressions. They watched a series of short film clips validated by previous research to elicit specific emotional responses.

During the first phase of the task, participants watched clips meant to induce disgust, sadness, amusement, and contentment. They were instructed to react naturally and not try to change how they felt. This phase established a baseline for how strongly each person normally reacted to the emotional content.

In the second phase, participants watched a new set of clips eliciting the same four emotions. This time, they received explicit instructions to regulate their feelings. For the sadness and disgust videos, they were told to use any strategy they wanted to make themselves feel less negative.

For the amusement and contentment videos, the instructions shifted. Participants were asked to manage their emotions so that they felt more positive, keeping the good feelings going. After each video, the participants rated the intensity of the specific emotion they experienced on a numerical scale.

In addition to self-reported emotional experience, the researchers used artificial intelligence software to analyze the participants’ facial expressions. The automated program scanned the video recordings and scored the presence and intensity of specific emotions on participants’ faces. This provided a secondary, behavioral measure of how successfully the participants regulated their emotions.

The results revealed distinct patterns in how cognitive abilities relate to emotional management. Participants who scored higher on the crystallized cognition tests were more successful at regulating their emotions across the board. This advantage appeared regardless of whether they were trying to reduce negative emotions or enhance positive ones.

The benefits of crystallized cognition were visible in both the participants’ self-reported feelings and their computer-analyzed facial expressions. The researchers suggest that a vast repository of life experience and vocabulary gives people a wider range of strategies to manage their feelings. People with high crystallized cognition might be better at labeling their emotions and selecting the right mental tool for a given situation.

Fluid cognition, on the other hand, was only associated with success in specific scenarios. Participants with higher fluid cognitive abilities were better at reducing their negative emotional experiences when watching the disgust and sadness clips. This type of fast, flexible thinking was not associated with the ability to boost positive emotions like amusement and contentment.

Dampening negative emotions might require more mental effort than enjoying positive ones. Decreasing sadness or disgust often requires a person to quickly shift their attention away from distressing information or rapidly reframe the meaning of a situation. These mental maneuvers rely heavily on the working memory and processing speed captured by fluid cognition tests.

The study also uncovered nuanced associations between age and emotion regulation. Older age was associated with less success in decreasing the experience of sadness and disgust. This pattern was consistent for both internal feelings and outward facial expressions.

The researchers note that negative, high-arousal emotions like disgust might pose specific physiological challenges for older adults. Alternatively, older adults might find it harder to detach from social loss themes present in sad videos due to shifting emotional priorities. As people age, they often become more prosocial and empathetic, which might make it harder to turn off feelings of sadness when witnessing others in distress.

Despite these difficulties with negative content, older adults were just as successful as younger adults at maintaining or amplifying positive emotions. Enhancing positive feelings often involves savoring a moment or elaborating on pleasant thoughts. This approach aligns well with the motivational goals of older adults, who tend to prioritize emotional well-being and positive experiences.

The researchers also tested whether possessing high cognitive abilities could offset the age-related difficulties in managing negative emotions. The statistical analysis showed no interaction between age and cognitive test performance. The benefits of crystallized cognition and the challenges associated with older age operated independently of each other.

While the study provides a detailed look at emotion regulation, the research has limitations. The study was cross-sectional, meaning it measured different people of different ages at a single point in time. This design prevents researchers from tracking how an individual’s emotion regulation skills might change as they grow older.

The laboratory setting also presents specific constraints. Participants were required to watch intensely emotional film clips, which might not reflect the emotional situations they encounter in daily life. In the real world, people often regulate their emotions by choosing which situations to enter or avoid entirely, an option not available during the computer task.

The use of artificial intelligence to code facial expressions is another factor to consider. Automated coding offers an objective measure of facial movements, but outward expressions do not always perfectly align with internal feelings. Some individuals might naturally express less emotion on their faces, especially when sitting alone in a room without an audience.

Future studies might explore a wider variety of emotions, such as fear or joy, to see if the patterns hold true. Researchers are also interested in examining how people select specific emotional strategies in their daily lives compared to what they do in a controlled laboratory environment. Understanding how life experience contributes to everyday emotional wellness remains an active area of psychological research.

The study, “Fluid and Crystallized Cognitive Abilities Differentially Predict Successful Regulation of Positive versus Negative Emotion,” was authored by Claire M. Growney, David A. Balota, and Tammy English.