title: Emotionality and aging: a theoretical and empirical analysis.
abstract: Much has been written about mood, emotionality, and affect in humans, but rarely has this topic been addressed from an adult developmental perspective. Indeed, the major theories on the determinants of human emotions have little to say about emotionality through middle and old age. Theories and data from several disciplines including psychology, sociology, gerontology, biology, and neurophysiology are integrated to propose answers to the following questions: (a) Do the intensity and duration of emotional experiences vary with age? (b) Do the aged show less day-to-day or within-day variability in emotional states? (c) Are particular types of emotional experiences more or less frequent among the aged? (d) Are there qualitative differences in the experience of specific emotional states among the aged? (e) Do the types of events that elicit emotional experience change with age?
mesh_terms: D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000339:Affect; D000368:Aged / Q000523:psychology*; D000375:Aging; D003071:Cognition; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D010549:Personal Satisfaction; D010551:Personality; D011582:Psychological Theory