Derek M. Isaacowitz’s research while affiliated with Northeastern University and other places

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Publications (186)


Conceal and Don't Feel as Much? Experiential Effects of Expressive Suppression
  • Article

November 2024

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17 Reads

Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin

Jessica L Jones

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Derek M Isaacowitz

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Özlem Ayduk

Emotion regulation research has routinely pitted the antecedent-focused strategy of cognitive reappraisal against the response-focused strategy of expressive suppression. This research has largely yielded that reappraisal is an effective strategy by which to change emotional experience, but implications of expressive suppression are not as clear. This may be due to variations in experimental methodologies, which have not consistently evaluated suppression against a within-subject control condition, as well as conceptual limitations that have muddled the implications of significant findings. Across two high-powered, within-subject paradigms, the present study demonstrates that expressive suppression induces significant decreases in negative emotion relative to one’s general attempts to downregulate negative emotion (Study 1) and respond naturally (Study 2). Our findings add to a growing body of literature that demonstrate that suppression may facilitate emotion regulation at both the expressive and experiential levels, and underscore the importance of incorporating flexibility and goal-focused frameworks in future research.


Emotion Regulation Tactics: A Key to Understanding Age (and Other Between- and Within-Person) Differences in Emotion Regulation Preference and Effectiveness

June 2024

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11 Reads

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2 Citations

Emotion Review

Older adults report high emotional well-being, but age-comparative studies of emotion regulation strategies have not identified systematic age differences. We propose that emotion regulation tactics may be more promising. Emotion regulation tactics involve strategy implementation in a specific situation, and have features shared across strategies involving positive or negative elements (objects/thoughts) in the environment that may be approached or receded from in the regulation attempt (i.e., a valence dimension about the environmental element, and a direction dimension indicating movement toward or away from it). Across several studies, older adults used more positive-approaching than negative-receding tactics. Positive-approaching tactics may also be more effective at regulating mood. We consider implications for aging, as well as group differences in emotion regulation behavior generally.



ASSOCIATIONS BETWEEN COGNITIVE RESOURCES AND EMOTION REGULATION TACTICS IN AN ADULT LIFESPAN SAMPLE
  • Article
  • Full-text available

December 2023

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39 Reads

Innovation in Aging

The current study investigated how trait-level cognitive capacity relates to emotion regulation tactic preferences in everyday life in adulthood and old age. 51 younger adults (ages 18-39), 53 middle-aged adults (ages 40-59), and 55 older adults (ages 60+) completed measures of working memory and verbal fluency, as well as 21 days of experience sampling. On each survey, participants indicated if they had regulated since the last survey and if so, what emotion regulation strategies they used and how they implemented that strategy through specific emotion regulation tactics. Each strategy laid out by the process model (situation selection, situation modification, attentional deployment, reappraisal, response modulation) could be implemented in three specific ways (called “tactics”): positivity-upregulating, negativity-downregulating, or negativity-upregulating. For example, a person may indicate they used situation selection and then would be asked whether they chose to (a) seek out a positive situation, (b) leave a negative situation, and/or (c) enter a negative situation. Acceptance was also included as a fourth tactic type but was not categorized under any strategy. Proportions of tactics used in each instance was calculated. Acceptance use was significantly negatively correlated with working memory performance; however, this association appeared to be driven primarily by middle-aged adults. Negativity-downregulation was positively correlated with numerous cognitive capacity measures in middle-aged adults. In sum, individual differences in cognitive resources appear to play the strongest role in tactic preferences in midlife rather than old age.

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EFFECT OF EMOTION NAMING ON EMOTION REGULATION IN YOUNGER AND OLDER ADULTS

December 2023

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66 Reads

Innovation in Aging

Prior research has shown that naming one’s emotions before regulation has a detrimental effect on regulation success (Nook et al., 2020). These researchers argued this effect was due to the affect crystallization that occurs after naming an emotion, which in turn makes it harder to modify or regulate that emotion. The aim of the current replication-extension study was to evaluate whether this effect would replicate in an older adult sample. Due to age-related changes in emotion regulation knowledge and behaviors, we hypothesized that age would moderate this effect, such that older adults would not be detrimentally impacted by naming their emotions, but younger adults would. Younger (18-25 years, N=50) and older adults (60+ years, N=50) viewed 80 IAPS images while being told to first ‘look’ or ‘name’ their experienced emotion and second to ‘look’ or ‘regulate’ their emotions (creating four within-subjects conditions). Unpleasant affect was measured on each trial, analyzed via a 2(age group) X 2(naming: yes/no) X 2(regulating: yes/no) mixed ANOVA. Results suggest a significant three-way interaction; within both age groups, the name-regulate trials were associated with significantly greater unpleasant affect compared to the look-regulate trials, suggesting that naming emotions was detrimental for both age groups. However, contrary to our hypothesis, this effect was larger in older adults (d=.82) than younger adults (d=.41). These findings suggest that affect crystallization may be stronger or faster in older adulthood.


Fig. 4 Younger adult × Neg Down top tactic interaction (depicts age group comparisons according to the middle-age group as a reference group)
Descriptive statistics for age groups, including percentage of completed bursts
Emotion Regulation Convoys: Individual and Age Differences in the Hierarchical Configuration of Emotion Regulation Behaviors in Everyday Life

December 2023

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102 Reads

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8 Citations

Affective Science

A key limitation of studying emotion regulation behavior is that there is currently no way to describe individual differences in use across a range of tactics, which could lead to investigations of intraindividual changes over time or interindividual differences as a function of personality, age, culture, or psychopathology diagnosis. We, therefore, introduce emotion regulation convoys. This research tool provides a snapshot of the hierarchy of emotion regulation tactics an individual favors across everyday life situations and how effective they are at regulating moods. We present data from a 3-month measurement burst study of emotion regulation behavior in everyday life in a sample (N = 236) of younger (18–39), middle-aged (40–59), and older adults (60–87), focusing on how individuals’ convoys may vary in how much they include tactics that involve upregulating-positivity, downregulating-negativity, upregulating-negativity, as well as acceptance, and how these may be differentially effective. Among the most frequently used tactics (top tactics), older adults used a lower proportion of negativity-downregulating tactics than younger adults (p < .001), and younger adults’ mood was more negatively affected by these tactics than middle-aged and older adults. Overall, using positivity-upregulating as a top tactic also predicted better mood post-regulation. Older adults’ emotion regulation convoys may be made up of more effective tactics; in general, they reported more positive mood post-regulation than the other age groups. Convoys help us see emotion regulation as a hierarchical configuration of potentially effective behaviors, allowing us to test for between-group differences and within-person changes more precisely. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s42761-023-00228-8.




Cardiac psychophysiological tuning to socioaffective content is disrupted in aged rhesus monkeys ( Macaca mulatta )

October 2023

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12 Reads

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2 Citations

Psychophysiology

Anthony C. Santistevan

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Olivia Fiske

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[...]

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Aging ushers in numerous disruptions to autonomic nervous system (ANS) function. Although the effects of aging on ANS function at rest are well characterized, there is surprising variation in reports of age‐related differences in ANS reactivity to psychosocial stressors, with some reports of decreases and other reports of increases in reactivity with age. The sources of variation in age‐related differences are largely unknown. Nonhuman primate models of socioaffective aging may help to uncover sources of this variation as nonhuman primates share key features of human ANS structure and function and researchers have precise control over the environments in which they age. In this report, we assess how response patterns to dynamic socioaffective stimuli in the parasympathetic and sympathetic branches of rhesus monkeys ( Macaca mulatta ) ANS differ in aged compared to middle‐aged monkeys. We find that respiratory sinus arrhythmia, a cardiac indicator of activity in the parasympathetic branch of the ANS, exhibits age‐related disruptions in responding while monkeys view videos of conspecifics. This suggests that there are evolutionarily conserved mechanisms responsible for the patterns of affective aging observed in humans and that aged rhesus monkeys are a robust translational model for human affective aging.


Age differences in emotion regulation strategy use and flexibility in daily life

September 2023

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40 Reads

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6 Citations

Objectives: Age-related shifts in emotion regulation patterns are important for explaining preserved emotional well-being in late adulthood amidst declines in physical and cognitive health. Although several studies have examined age-related shifts in emotion regulation strategy use, age differences in how specific strategies are flexibly adapted to shifting contexts in daily life and the adaptiveness of such shifts remains poorly understood. Methods: 130 younger adults (ages 22-35) and 130 older adults (ages 65-85) completed a modified Day Reconstruction Method Assessment and self-report questionnaires to examine age differences in emotion regulation strategy use and one aspect of emotion regulation flexibility (responsiveness) in daily life, and the adaptive implications of these differences. Results: Older adults exhibited more frequent acceptance use, less frequent distraction use, and less flexibility in the responsiveness of strategies with varying negative affect. Across age groups, the use of expressive suppression and distraction was associated with less adaptive outcomes, whereas higher acceptance responsiveness, positive reappraisal responsiveness, and situation selection responsiveness were associated with more adaptive outcomes. Age-group moderated the associations between adaptiveness metrics with the use and flexibility of several emotion regulation strategies. Conclusion: The current findings provide early evidence of age-related decreases in emotion regulation flexibility as well as age-related shifts in the adaptiveness of emotion regulation patterns.


Citations (69)


... Second, we did not examine the specific ways that suppression and reappraisal might be implemented in response to discrimination (i.e., emotion regulation tactics). For example, an individual can reappraise a situation by thinking about the positive or negative aspects along with the consequences of the situation 65 . In the context of discrimination, reappraising a discriminatory event can take the form of reflecting on insights or lessons learned from a discrimination experience or trying to reflect on the event from an objective, third person perspective 26,66 . ...

Reference:

Emotion regulation in response to discrimination: Exploring the role of self-control and impression management emotion-regulation goals
Emotion Regulation Tactics: A Key to Understanding Age (and Other Between- and Within-Person) Differences in Emotion Regulation Preference and Effectiveness
  • Citing Article
  • June 2024

Emotion Review

... During each daily diary survey, participants indicated which strategies they used to reduce their COVID-19 anxiety on that day using a binary checklist (as in, e.g., Chen et al., 2024;DiGirolamo et al., 2023; McMahon & Naragon-Gainey, 2019; see Table 1) such that endorsement of a given strategy was coded as 1 = yes and 0 = no. ...

Emotion Regulation Convoys: Individual and Age Differences in the Hierarchical Configuration of Emotion Regulation Behaviors in Everyday Life

Affective Science

... Although many people do not think they can manage their experience of emotions as well as their expression of emotion, researchers have argued effectively that we can indeed manage our internal experiences Ford and Gross 2018;Olhaberry and Sieverson 2022;Salguero and Ramos-Cejudo 2023). Further, the ability to regulate emotions has been understood as a central component of affective competence that is possible to develop and utilize throughout one's lifespan (Camras and Halberstadt 2017;Halberstadt et al. 2001;Isaacowitz and English 2024;Morris et al. 2017). ...

Beyond Strategies: The When and Why of Emotion Regulation in Aging
  • Citing Article
  • November 2023

Current Opinion in Psychology

... Emotion regulation skills typically develop and become more refined during adolescence and young adulthood. Therefore, the engagement in a variety of contrasting behaviors to navigate challenging situations may explain why younger individuals are more likely to belong to this profile (Whitmoyer et al., 2024). In support of this argument, we found that older individuals more likely belonged to the more adaptive Profile 7. ...

Age differences in emotion regulation strategy use and flexibility in daily life
  • Citing Article
  • September 2023

... I hope that the field continues to move toward more transparent practices, and that-in both the content of what we study and the people who study it-we become more diverse and inclusive. Elsewhere I have argued for the particular importance of clearly articulating patterns of results that would both increase or decrease beliefs in theories (Isaacowitz, 2023;Isaacowitz & Wolfe, in press); these changes may be painful in the short run but will be important to help our empirical findings to inform our theories in a way that is necessary for theoretical refinement and development. ...

Publishing Findings That Speak Against Dominant Theories Is Challenging Yet Important for the Study of Psychological Aging: Introduction to Special Section
  • Citing Article
  • June 2023

The Journals of Gerontology Series B Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences

... Despite good tools being available to translationally evaluate autonomic nervous system responses (e.g., heart rate, respiratory sinus arrythmia, pre-ejection period, blood pressure) and evidence that NHPs have similar patterns of autonomic physiological responses in response to affective stimuli as humans do (Bliss-Moreau et al., 2013), only one recent study looked at age-related changes in cardiac physiology in response to socioaffective stimuli. Replicating the original report (Bliss-Moreau et al., 2013), middle-aged monkeys' cardiac parasympathetic responses tracked with the affective valence of the stimuli they viewed (30-second movies that varied from very negative to very positive), but aged monkeys' cardiac responses were not impacted by valence and arousal content to the same degreethat is, their ANS reactivity was blunted (Santistevan et al., 2022b). Baseline parasympathetic activity was consistent across age groups and there was no evidence of age-related differences in sympathetic function. ...

Cardiac psychophysiological tuning to socioaffective content is disrupted in aged rhesus monkeys
  • Citing Preprint
  • November 2022

... Using an eye tracking task designed to emulate those used in humans (e.g. Isaacowitz et al., 2006), visual attention patterns that suggest a positivity effect were identified in male and female rhesus macaques (Santistevan et al., 2022a). Middle-aged monkeys looked for longer at faces depicting negative information (e.g., threat face) but aged monkeys showed no such bias. ...

See no evil: Attentional bias towards threat is diminished in aged monkeys
  • Citing Preprint
  • November 2022

... Experience sampling can capture savoring moments as they occur, addressing this issue and allowing for examination of within-person effects to demonstrate how variations in one's emotional context relate to savoring. Notably, past daily savoring studies have focused on college students (Colombo et al., 2021;Heiy & Cheavens, 2014;Jose et al., 2012); minimal work has examined older adults' positive attentional deployment in daily life contexts (DiGirolamo et al., 2023). ...

Attention-Focused Emotion Regulation in Everyday Life in Adulthood and Old Age

Emotion

... between ideal and actual states (Scheibe et al., 2013), and report less need or desire to regulate emotions in daily life compared with younger adults (e.g., Growney et al., 2023;Wolfe & Isaacowitz, 2023). From the perspective of SST, older people benefit emotionally from living in social worlds they have carefully constructed over decades and appreciating what they have in the here and now. ...

Aging and Emotion Regulation Tactics Across the Historical Events of 2020
  • Citing Article
  • July 2022

The Gerontologist

... The effect of age is particularly compelling, as increased age is associated with biased attention toward positive information-known as the attentional positivity effect-that facilitates concomitant improvements in emotional wellbeing (Mather and Carstensen, 2005). However, as prevalent as this increased positivity effect is in the emotion and aging literature, recent reviews have begun to highlight methodological and theoretical issues in this area (e.g., Isaacowitz, 2022). One concern is that other moderators could play crucial yet understudied roles in shaping age-related affective biases. ...

What Do We Know About Aging and Emotion Regulation?
  • Citing Article
  • May 2022

Perspectives on Psychological Science