Positive Deprivational Study

The world’s population is aging. Birth rates are increasing and death rates are decreasing causing the amount of people over 65 in the world to top 15%, with this predicted to rise to 25% by 2050 (Chand & Tung, 2014). As a result, it is more important than ever to ensure that as a global society we understand the emotional make up of our eldest members. Both positive and negative affect are well studied and supported measures of ones daily emotional experience, both by studying them independently as well as how they react to each other. Positive affect (PA) is to the extent to which individual’s experience feelings of alertness, joviality, determination, enthusiasm etc. Juxtaposing this, negative affect (NA) is the experience of feelings such
as sadness, emptiness, anger, fear, guilt or loneliness(Işıka & Üzbe, 2015). Whilst investigating the impact that situational and cognitive factors have on individual’s emotional experience, this essay will focus on those transitioning from late adulthood into old age, around 60-70 years of age. Cognitive decline and situational factors both influence the variability of NA and PA that the elderly experience in different and intriguing ways.
Before an understanding of how cognitive and situational factors contribute to the emotional experience that the transitioning adult typically has, it is important to have a clear picture of what this experience generally is.
There is empirical evidence to say that negative effect as a single factor reduces with age and is quite low around late adulthood and early old age. Emotional stability appears to rise with age, peaking around late adulthood. (Charles , Reynolds , & Gatz, 2001). The evidence regarding positive affect is less clear-cut and definitive. Whilst some studies indicate that the prevalence of positive affect increases slightly with age (Gross et al., 1997), others report the the opposite relationship (Charles et al., 2001). These conflicting results are wide spread throughout the literature. Straying away from positive affect as a whole measure and looking at more specific feelings experienced by adults can shed some light onto this
confusion.
Self esteem is a widely used example of positive affect. In a study that involved more than 300,000 participants it was found that self esteem In the ages orange of 60-69 was the second highest throughout the whole life span (Robins, Trzesniewski, Tracy , Potter, & Gosling, 2002). Other studies addressing similar emotional experiences to positive affect concluded similar results. There is an increase of life satisfaction throughout the life span, and once again peaking around 60-70 years of age (Mroczek & Avron, 2005). These are just two examples of positive affect increases around the late adulthood stage that have empirical support. There are many other examples of similar trends in literature so the reason why studies cannot seem to find conclusive evidence in the increase of positive affect as a whole remains somewhat a mystery. In sum, it is important to understand that contrary to what many believe, an overwhelming trend that has emerged from empirical research that as people transition from adulthood to old age, they are highly emotional stable, satisfied with their life and experience the less negative emotions than at any other stage of life (Scheibe & Laura, 2010). Another way in which emotional experience and its variability can be investigated is through the intraindividual correlation (iCorr) of positive and negative affect. This is opposed to merely assessing how much or little NA or PA is present in a persons life as discussed above (Hülür, Hoppmann, Ram, & Gerstorf, 2015). The iCorr relates to how positive and negative affect change simultaneously to a situation. iCorr is on a continuum of -1 to 1 with a positive score indicating that NA and PA move together in the same direction, a score close to zero indicating that NA and PA move independently of each other and a negative score indicating that they move in opposite directions of each other (Hülür et al,. 2015). iCorr seems to stay fairy stable throughout the lifespan, with the general population usually having a slightly negative iCorr (Hülür et al,. 2015). The literature mostly points towards having an iCorr of close to 0 as most beneficial to us. This Is because it allows people to react to situations and essentially take the good with the bad. Specifically it is linked with higher resilience and self esteem and less daily stress (Hülür et al,. 2015). The logical next step in investigating the emotional experience of the those in late adulthood have is attempting to explain why the above trends take place.
It is well researched and documented that many cognitive abilities decline as age increases, especially in old age (Hülür et al,. 2015). Intriguing new research has linked iCorr scores of close to 0 (or less negative) with increased trajectories of cognitive decline, primarily in fluency and knowledge measures (Hülür, Hoppmann, Ram, & Gerstorf, 2015). What this essentially is saying is that as cognitive abilities begin to decline in old age, more positive, favourable and stable emotional experiences become more prevalent. This is in a sense an unexpected notion as you would expect good cognitive health to enhance emotional experience, however there is an evidence backed theorised monarchism that seems to give a fairly good explanation as to why this may be happening. According to Labouvie-Vief and Marquez (2004), affective processing relies heavily on crystallized cognitive abilities (fluency and language). As these cognitive abilities decline in old age, theoretically so to would the person’s ability to automatically process affective information, which leads to a less negative iCorr. The evidence presented by Hülür et al. (2015) is very strong in support of this phenomenon. However, it could be argued that the correlation between cognitive decline and emotional experience could be simply caused by the
fact that the elderly generally have increased life satisfaction brought about from other, (possibly merely situational factors) that occur coincidentally at the same time in the life span as cognitive ability declines, causing both to change but in the absence of causation. This is a decent argument, however due to the evidence linking the need of crystallized cognitive ability in processing affects, it is very likely that it is in fact causation producing the relationship As well as cognitive factors, situational factors also play a role in the emotional experience of the those in late adulthood and early old age. There are endless situational factors that may play a role in PA and NA levels of any one person. In order to be succinct we will only be able to mention a few. Marital status is a strong predictor of PA and NA in the elderly (Oh, Ah Song , Chan, & Ryu, 2013)