Aging and the Self-Regulation of Sadness: A Longitudinal Study of Individuals With and Without Histories of Depression

Abstract

Based on models of emotional aging, we hypothesized that as individuals grow older, they are increasingly likely to regulate sadness in ways that attenuate it (adaptive responses) while pruning responses that prolong/magnify that affect (maladaptive responses) and that depressive psychopathology disrupts those normative developmental trajectories. Under the auspices of several consecutive studies, participants with (n = 217) or without (n = 151) histories of depression, ages 16 to 58 years, were assessed repeatedly (mean interassessment interval: 4.5 years) for up to 21 years (M = 12.5 years). Participants’ reports of their usual regulatory responses to sadness were categorized as adaptive or maladaptive and as reflecting primarily social, cognitive, or behavioral processes. We found that aging signaled increasing use of adaptive regulatory responses regardless of depression history but did not predict pruning of maladaptive responses. Across adulthood, individuals who had been ever depressed (versus those never depressed) consistently deployed maladaptive regulatory responses to sadness more frequently and adaptive responses less frequently, but depression history did not significantly alter the developmental trajectories of response deployment. Among the ever depressed, age 35 signaled a breakpoint: Responses to sadness that maintained/exacerbated it increased significantly and remained so, suggesting difficulties meeting the challenges of “established adulthood.” Our longitudinal findings support models of adult development according to which improved emotion regulation is one benefit of aging, underscore the persistent detrimental effects of depression, and indicate that proactive interventions to foster adaptive sadness regulation among adults at high risk for depression may be particularly fruitful before age 35.