Abstract

Emotion-specific autonomic nervous system (ANS) activity was studied in 20 elderly people (age 71-83 years, M = 77) who followed muscle-by-muscle instructions for constructing facial prototypes of emotional expressions and relived past emotional experiences. Results indicated that (a) patterns of emotion-specific ANS activity produced by these tasks closely resembled those found in other studies with younger Ss, (b) the magnitude of change in ANS measures was smaller in older than in younger Ss, (c) patterns of emotion-specific ANS activity showed generality across the 2 modes of elicitation, (d) emotion self-reports and spontaneous production of emotional facial expressions that occurred during relived emotional memories were comparable with those found in younger Ss, (e) elderly men and women did not differ in emotional physiology or facial expression, and (f) elderly women reported experiencing more intense emotions when reliving emotional memories than did elderly men.

Keywords

PsychologyExpression (computer science)Developmental psychologyPhysiologyCognitive psychologyMedicine

MeSH Terms

AgedAged80 and overArousalAutonomic Nervous SystemEmotionsFacial ExpressionFemaleGender IdentityHumansMaleMental RecallPsychophysiology

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Publication Info

Year
1991
Type
article
Volume
6
Issue
1
Pages
28-35
Citations
485
Access
Closed

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Cite This

Robert W. Levenson, Laura L. Carstensen, Wallace V. Friesen et al. (1991). Emotion, physiology, and expression in old age.. Psychology and Aging , 6 (1) , 28-35. https://doi.org/10.1037/0882-7974.6.1.28

Identifiers

DOI
10.1037/0882-7974.6.1.28
PMID
2029364

Data Quality

Data completeness: 81%