Research

Emotional processing throughout adulthood and old age

Throughout most of our daily lives, we encounter information in our environment that will produce an emotional response. Our research focuses on how adults of different ages react and engage with different forms of emotional stimuli. We are particularly interested in how younger and older adults may preferentially engage with certain types of emotional stimuli depending on a variety of factors, namely motivational contexts.

Emotion regulation and aging:

Research over the past few decades in the psychology of human aging suggests that growing old, stereotypically linked with "loss" (e.g., cognitive decline, physical dysfunction, and health degradation), is actually met with gains in emotional functioning and well-being. Our research examines some of the conditions and strategies that individuals use at various ages to facilitate attempts at successful emotion regulation. Of particular recent interest is examining how certain emotion regulation pursuits/behaviors actually lead to desired well-being outcomes.

Our research approach:

We combine multiple techniques and levels of analyses in our research. We utilize controlled laboratory experiments to specifically assess how aging influences aspects of emotional processing and regulation. However, we are also interested in the real world application of our findings by investigating these phenomena within idiographic settings (e.g., within a person's own home environment).

We feel that utilizing psychophysiological methods can provide further insight into the multifaceted nature of emotional experience. To this end, we often combine behavioral testing with the use of eye tracking, ECG, and EDA measures to assess emotional processing and regulation at both a cognitive and physiological level.