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Andy’s Quick Hits (240): Older People are Better at Responding to Distress
We may have some cliched ideas of older people like the grumpy or angry old man, or woman (but it is often a man).
However, research continually shows the opposite. Namely that people tend to mellow out with age. And another piece of research published in March this year also shows that older people respond better to distress. This is an interesting piece conducted by Susanne Schweizer of the University of South Wales in Australia.
What did they do?
249 participants aged between 18 and 88 watched a series of clips with emotional content. This varied from positive, such as babies giggling, to neutral, such as a weather forecast, or negative, such as footage of the Rwandan genocide. They were asked to watch these and allow any emotional responses to arise naturally. However, they were then instructed to actively reframe 50% of the negative content clips and try to put this in a more positive light.
They then rated their emotional responses to each of the clips.
What did they find?
They found that older people were
- More positive to positive emotional stimuli
- More positive to neutral emotional stimuli
