Emotional responses toward COVID-19: A longitudinal assessment of age differences

Mapping Intimacies ◽

10.1101/2021.03.21.21254050 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Marta Malesza

Keyword(s):

Older Adults ◽

Coping Strategies ◽

Emotional Regulation ◽

Age Groups ◽

Dynamic Environment ◽

Emotional Responses ◽

Longitudinal Assessment ◽

Younger Adults ◽

Brief Cope ◽

And Coping

The current study investigates the relation between age and emotional responses and coping strategies at two moments during the spread of COVID-19 in Poland, namely the first peak (March-May 2020) and the second pick (October-December 2020). A sample of 414 individuals between the ages of 18 and 81 were asked to rate the intensity of the shock, sadness, anger, and fear they experienced due to COVID-19 and respond to items from the Brief Cope questionnaire. The present findings demonstrate that anger was consistently less intense among older adults than younger ones. Emotion-focused coping strategies were more commonly used by younger adults than middle-aged or older ones at the first peak of the outbreak; however, this trend had reversed during the second peak of the pandemic, as the older age groups demonstrated a far greater increase in the use of this form of coping. Results indicate a greater ability to use emotional regulation among older adults than younger ones, as the former are less likely to react to a crisis through anger and more able to adapt coping mechanisms to a dynamic environment.

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EXPLORING AGE, GENDER, AND RELATIONSHIP CLOSENESS DIFFERENCES IN RESPONSES TO IGNORED DISRESPECT

Innovation in Aging ◽

10.1093/geroni/igz038.1118 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 3 (Supplement_1) ◽

pp. S305-S305

Author(s):

Jenessa C Steele ◽

Amanda Chappell ◽

Rachel Scott

Keyword(s):

Older Adults ◽

Young Adults ◽

Age Differences ◽

Negative Emotions ◽

Age Groups ◽

Emotional Responses ◽

Younger Adults ◽

Relationship Closeness ◽

Close Condition

Abstract Emotional responses to disrespect tend to be negative (Hawkins, 2015). Little is known about how responses to disrespect vary across age groups and relationship closeness. It is unknown whether older adults have more emotional protection against disrespectful experiences, or are more deeply affected due to relationship closeness. Overall, we might expect that older adults react less negatively to disrespect compared to young adults, as they are more-skilled emotion regulators (Carstensen, 1991; English & Carstensen, 2014). We aimed to explore if, and under which circumstances, older adults are more or less sensitive to disrespect compared to younger adults. Three hundred participants responded to six scenarios illustrating ignored disrespect. Participants were randomly assigned to close or distant relationship disrespect scenarios. Relationship closeness was first determined by requesting participants identify a person in each layer of Kahn and Antonucci’s (1980) Social Convoy Model. Identified names were then automatically inserted into the six scenarios. Emotional responses and sensitivity to each scenario were recorded. Participants in the close condition reported more sensitivity to disrespect and negative emotions than participants in the distant condition. Females reported more sensitivity to disrespect and negative emotions than males. We did not find overwhelming support for age differences in responses to disrespect. A single scenario indicated younger participants more sensitive to disrespect than older participants. Findings suggest it is more hurtful to be disrespected by someone close to you and females may be more sensitive to disrespect than males. More research investigating the role of age in disrespect is needed.

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Emotional responses and coping strategies of nurses and nursing college students during COVID-19 outbreak

10.1101/2020.03.05.20031898 ◽

2020 ◽

Cited By ~ 19

Author(s):

Long Huang ◽

Fuming Xu ◽

Hairong Liu

Keyword(s):

College Students ◽

Coping Strategies ◽

Virus Disease ◽

Great Influence ◽

Emotional Responses ◽

Online Questionnaire ◽

Brief Cope ◽

Nursing College ◽

And Coping ◽

Anxiety And Fear

AbstractBackgroundAffected by a Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak, Since December 2019, there have been more than 76,000 cases of COVID-19 in China, causing more than 3,000 medical staff infections. Due to COVID-19 spreads quickly, is highly contagious, and can be fatal in severe cases, and there are no specific medicines, it poses a huge threat to the life and health of nurses and has a large impact on their emotional responses and coping strategies.MethodsThis study conducted an online questionnaire survey from February 1 to 9, 2020 to investigate the current state of emotional responses and coping strategies of nurses and college nursing students in Anhui Province. This study used a modified Brief COPE (Carver, 1997) and a emotional responses scale.ResultsThe results found that women showed more severe anxiety and fear than men. Participants from cities showed more anxiety and fear than participants from rural, but rural participants showed more sadness than urban participants. The closer COVID-19 is to the participants, the stronger the anxiety and anger. Compared with Nursing college students, nurses have stronger emotional responses and are more willing to use Problem-focused coping. People may have a cycle of “the more fear, the more problem-focused coping”. And people may “The more angry, the more emotion-focused coping”, “the more problem-focused coping, the more anxious, the more angry, the more sadness”.ConclusionCOVID-19 is a pressure source with great influence, both for individuals and for the social public groups. Different individuals and groups may experience different levels of psychological crisis, and those nurses at the core of the incident are affected. Hospitals should focus on providing psychological support to nurses and providing timely psychological assistance and training in coping strategies.Improving nurses’ ability to regulate emotions and effective coping strategies, providing a strong guarantee for resolutely winning the battle against epidemic prevention and control.

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Reactive, Agentic, Apathetic, or Challenged? Aging, Emotion, and Coping During the COVID-19 Pandemic

The Gerontologist ◽

10.1093/geront/gnaa196 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Nathaniel A Young ◽

Christian E Waugh ◽

Alyssa R Minton ◽

Susan T Charles ◽

Claudia M Haase ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Older Adults ◽

Negative Affect ◽

Coping Strategies ◽

Older Adult ◽

Age Differences ◽

Well Being ◽

Emotional Experiences ◽

Younger Adults ◽

And Coping ◽

Design And Methods

Abstract Background and Objectives Advanced age is generally associated with improved emotional well-being, but the COVID-19 pandemic unleashed a global stressor that gravely threatened the physical well-being and ostensibly challenged the emotional well-being of older adults disproportionately. The current study investigated differences in emotional experiences and coping strategies between younger and older adults during the pandemic, and whether these differences were accounted for by age differences in appraisal of the pandemic. Research Design and Methods We asked younger (n = 181) and older adult (n = 176) participants to report their stress, appraisals the pandemic, emotions, and the ways in which they were coping with the pandemic. Results Results indicated that older adults experienced less stress and less negative affect and used greater problem-focused coping and less avoidant coping in response to the pandemic than younger adults. Further, age differences in affect and coping were partially accounted for by age differences in appraisals of the pandemic. Discussion and Implications Despite their objectively higher risk of illness and death due to the pandemic, older adults experienced less negative affect and used more agentic coping strategies than younger adults.

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Cognitive Load Affects Speech Motor Performance Differently in Older and Younger Adults

Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research ◽

10.1044/2018_jslhr-s-17-0222 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 62 (5) ◽

pp. 1258-1277 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Megan K. MacPherson

Keyword(s):

Older Adults ◽

Cognitive Load ◽

Motor Performance ◽

Age Groups ◽

Incongruent Condition ◽

Sentence Production ◽

Movement Duration ◽

Production Task ◽

Younger Adults ◽

Speech Motor

PurposeThe aim of this study was to determine the impact of cognitive load imposed by a speech production task on the speech motor performance of healthy older and younger adults. Response inhibition, selective attention, and working memory were the primary cognitive processes of interest.MethodTwelve healthy older and 12 healthy younger adults produced multiple repetitions of 4 sentences containing an embedded Stroop task in 2 cognitive load conditions: congruent and incongruent. The incongruent condition, which required participants to suppress orthographic information to say the font colors in which color words were written, represented an increase in cognitive load relative to the congruent condition in which word text and font color matched. Kinematic measures of articulatory coordination variability and movement duration as well as a behavioral measure of sentence production accuracy were compared between groups and conditions and across 3 sentence segments (pre-, during-, and post-Stroop).ResultsIncreased cognitive load in the incongruent condition was associated with increased articulatory coordination variability and movement duration, compared to the congruent Stroop condition, for both age groups. Overall, the effect of increased cognitive load was greater for older adults than younger adults and was greatest in the portion of the sentence in which cognitive load was manipulated (during-Stroop), followed by the pre-Stroop segment. Sentence production accuracy was reduced for older adults in the incongruent condition.ConclusionsIncreased cognitive load involving response inhibition, selective attention, and working memory processes within a speech production task disrupted both the stability and timing with which speech was produced by both age groups. Older adults' speech motor performance may have been more affected due to age-related changes in cognitive and motoric functions that result in altered motor cognition.

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Video Games and Emotion Regulation

GeroPsych ◽

10.1024/1662-9647/a000196 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 31 (4) ◽

pp. 205-213 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Kathryn L. Ossenfort ◽

Derek M. Isaacowitz

Keyword(s):

Older Adults ◽

Emotion Regulation ◽

Video Games ◽

Age Differences ◽

Interactive Media ◽

Age Groups ◽

Younger Adults ◽

Media Usage ◽

The Everyday ◽

Media Preferences

Abstract. Research on age differences in media usage has shown that older adults are more likely than younger adults to select positive emotional content. Research on emotional aging has examined whether older adults also seek out positivity in the everyday situations they choose, resulting so far in mixed results. We investigated the emotional choices of different age groups using video games as a more interactive type of affect-laden stimuli. Participants made multiple selections from a group of positive and negative games. Results showed that older adults selected the more positive games, but also reported feeling worse after playing them. Results supplement the literature on positivity in situation selection as well as on older adults’ interactive media preferences.

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Are the Acute Effects of THC Different in Aging Adults?

Brain Sciences ◽

10.3390/brainsci11050590 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 11 (5) ◽

pp. 590

Author(s):

Raeghan L. Mueller ◽

Jarrod M. Ellingson ◽

L. Cinnamon Bidwell ◽

Angela D. Bryan ◽

Kent E. Hutchison

Keyword(s):

Older Adults ◽

Young Adults ◽

Age Groups ◽

Young Group ◽

Self Administration ◽

Behavioral Measures ◽

Younger Adults ◽

Different Types ◽

Before And After ◽

Aging Adults

In recent years of expanding legalization, older adults have reported the largest increase in cannabis use of any age group. While its use has been studied extensively in young adults, little is known about the effects of THC in older adults and whether the risks of cannabis might be different, particularly concerning intoxication and cognition. The current study investigated whether age is associated with the deleterious effects of THC on cognitive performance and other behavioral measures before and after ad libitum self-administration of three different types of cannabis flower (THC dominant, THC + CBD, and CBD dominant). Age groups consisted of young adults (ages 21–25) and older adults (ages 55–70). Controlling for pre-use scores on all measures, the THC dominant chemovar produced a greater deleterious effect in younger adults compared with older adults in tests of learning and processing speed, whereas there were no differences between old and young in the effects of the other chemovars. In addition, the young group reported greater cannabis craving than the older group after using the THC chemovar. Consistent with some reports in the preclinical literature, the findings suggest that older adults may be less sensitive to the effects of THC on cognitive and affective measures.

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Housing Transitions and Recovery of Older Adults Following Hurricane Sandy

The Journals of Gerontology Series B ◽

10.1093/geronb/gby126 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 74 (6) ◽

pp. 1041-1052 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Alexis A Merdjanoff ◽

Rachael Piltch-Loeb ◽

Sarah Friedman ◽

David M Abramson

Keyword(s):

Older Adults ◽

Age Groups ◽

Family Health ◽

Hurricane Sandy ◽

Younger Adults ◽

Younger Age ◽

Observational Cohort ◽

Emergency Housing ◽

Young Old ◽

Post Disaster

Abstract Objectives This study explores the effects of social and environmental disruption on emergency housing transitions among older adults following Hurricane Sandy. It is based upon the Sandy Child and Family Health (S-CAFH) Study, an observational cohort of 1,000 randomly sampled New Jersey residents living in the nine counties most affected by Sandy. Methods This analysis examines the post-Sandy housing transitions and recovery of the young-old (55–64), mid-old (65–74), and old-old (75+) compared with younger adults (19–54). We consider length of displacement, number of places stayed after Sandy, the housing host (i.e., family only, friends only, or multi-host), and self-reported recovery. Results Among all age groups, the old-old (75+) reported the highest rates of housing damage and were more likely to stay in one place besides their home, as well as stay with family rather than by themselves after the storm. Despite this disruption, the old-old were most likely to have recovered from Hurricane Sandy. Discussion Findings suggest that the old-old were more resilient to Hurricane Sandy than younger age groups. Understanding the unique post-disaster housing needs of older adults can help identify critical points of intervention for their post-disaster recovery.

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