How Often and Why Do People Manage Their Emotions in Older Adulthood?

These findings extend previous work on emotion regulation in aging, which largely has focused on strategies, by documenting age differences in how often, but not why, people regulate. Future work is needed to explore how age-related differences in life contexts might result in less need for emotion regulation in older adults. Conserving effort directed toward emotion regulation could be particularly beneficial among older adults with more limited cognitive resources.