Lifespan trajectories of negative and positive affect: A coordinated analysis of 14 longitudinal studies

Abstract

Lifespan developmental theories suggest age-related shifts in motivation, cognition, emotion regulation, and stressor experience lead to changes in mean levels of negative and positive affect across the lifespan. The present research used coordinated data analysis to examine mean-level affective trajectories in 186,752 participants ranging from 11–104 years old across 14 longitudinal studies. Random-effects models were used to estimate meta-analytic effect sizes. On average, negative affect decreased until early older adulthood, and then remained stable throughout older adulthood. Meanwhile, positive affect remained stable across most of the younger and middle-aged adult lifespan, before starting its descent in later middle-aged adulthood and continuing to decline throughout older adulthood. Studies with older samples showed a clearer flattening effect of negative affect and steeper decline of positive affect in late-life relative to younger samples. These findings suggest that lifespan developmental affect trajectories are nuanced and not a direct inverse of each other.

Plain language summary

The current project brings together people from across the world to understand how their experiences of positive and negative emotions change. Using 14 different longitudinal studies (i.e., studies where the same people answer the same questions every few years) with over 185,000 people from the United States, Western Europe, and Australia, we investigated how people’s emotional experiences changed as they got older. We found that people typically experience the highest frequency of positive emotions in young adulthood and middle-aged adulthood, and then this frequency decreases as people age during older adulthood. Negative emotions follow quite a different pattern, with negative emotions being at their peak in adolescence and young adulthood, before decreasing as people get into the early years of older adulthood. Contrary to expectations, the frequency of negative emotions continued to stay at low levels late in older adulthood. Put in years, the frequency of positive emotions was highest when people were in their 20 s and thirties, began to decrease in their 40 s, and continued to decrease until end of life. Meanwhile, the frequency of negative emotions was highest when people were in their 20 s, decreased until people were in their 60 s, and remained stable at these low levels until the end of life. While experiences of joy, excitement, or happiness may decrease as people get older, the assumption that negative emotions will increase as well is not supported from the current study as feelings of frustration, sadness, and distress remain low in later years.