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Theses and Dissertations

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10217/100456

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Browsing Theses and Dissertations by Subject "age differences"

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    Age differences in negative affective reactivity: do stressor types matter?
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2025) Yang, Yijia, author; Luong, Gloria, advisor; Aichele, Stephen, committee member; Nelson, Niccole, committee member
    Background and Objectives: Stress may predict poorer health through increased negative affect (NA), which is formally termed as NA reactivity. Age is an important factor associated with different emotional advantages. However, findings about age differences in NA reactivity are mixed in the literature, such that some studies show older adults exhibit more NA reactivity than younger adults, whereas others show a reverse trend or no age-related differences at all. The current study tested this inconsistency by exploring how age differences in NA reactivity vary by stressor type. Design and Methods: Participants were from the Health and Daily Experiences (HEADE) study, which included 56 younger adults (19-35) and 106 older adults (60+) who completed three lab sessions and eight consecutive days of ecological momentary assessments (EMA) surveys. Three stressor types, cognitively demanding stressors, interpersonal stressors, and general daily life stressors, were studied through repeated measures ANOVA on the collected data. Results: We found that stressor type significantly moderated age differences in NA reactivity. More specifically, older adults showed more NA reactivity while facing cognitively demanding stressors. However, the age differences were not statistically significant for interpersonal and general daily life stressors. Also, no statistically significant result was found for the moderating effect of stressor severity on the association between age differences and NA reactivity. Discussion and Conclusions: Overall, younger adults and older adults display different emotional advantages depending on different types of stressors. Thus, specific age-related health recommendations could be proposed based on different stressor types, and studying age differences in NA reactivity about other types of stressors would be a future direction.
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    Age group differences in responses to laboratory stressors: task appraisals and affect reactivity
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2022) Miller, James Walter, author; Luong, Gloria, advisor; Aichele, Stephen, committee member; Graham, Daniel, committee member
    Several theories of lifespan socioemotional development posit that adults become more adept at regulating their emotions during stressful situations as they age. However, mixed findings in the literature do not yet provide clear support for this assumption. Cognitive appraisals have been found to influence affective reactivity to stressors, but few studies have directly examined their role in explaining age-group differences in affective reactivity. Additionally, there is limited information available for how trajectories of adaptation in affective reactivity and cognitive appraisals in response to equivalent stressor exposures may vary across adult age-groups. To address these gaps in the literature, the current study used a structural equation modeling framework to examine younger (n = 138) and older adults' (n = 106) trajectories of affective reactivity and cognitive appraisals in response to three exposures to the Trier Social Stress Test. We then investigated the extent to which, over time, changes in cognitive appraisals accounted for age-group differences in changes of affective reactivity. Older adults reported attenuated reductions in negative affective reactivity, smaller decreases in appraisals of task-difficulty, and reduced improvements in appraisals of task-performance, relative to younger adults. Additionally, older adults' appraisals of the task as relatively more difficult over time accounted for their comparatively elevated levels of negative affective reactivity across assessments. Together, these findings suggest that older adults, compared to younger adults, may show attenuated trajectories of adaptation to repeated stressor exposures when the stressor is novel, uncontrollable, or especially threatening to older adults.