LIFESPAN PERSPECTIVE ON EMOTION REGULATION AND STRESS AT WORK
A Lifespan Perspective on Emotion Regulation, Stress, and Well-Being in the
Workplace
Susanne Scheibe (University of Groningen)
& Hannes Zacher (The University of Queensland)
Chapter to be appear in:
Volume 11 of Research in Occupational Stress and Well Being (Pamela L. Perrewé, Jonathon
Halbesleben and Christopher C. Rosen, Eds.); The Role of Emotion and Emotion Regulation;
Published by Emerald Group Publishing.
Contact:
Susanne Scheibe
Hannes Zacher
Department of Psychology
School of Psychology
University of Groningen
The University of Queensland
Grote Kruisstraat 2/1
Brisbane
9712TS Groningen
Queensland 4072
The Netherlands
Australia
T +31 (0)50 363 6316
T +61 (0)7 3365 6423
F +31 (0)50 363 4581
F +61 (0)7 3365 4466
Email [email protected]
Email [email protected]
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LIFESPAN PERSPECTIVE ON EMOTION REGULATION AND STRESS AT WORK
Abstract
Researchers in the field of occupational stress and well-being are increasingly interested in
the role of emotion regulation in the work context. Emotion regulation has also been widely
investigated in the area of lifespan developmental psychology, with findings indicating that
the ability to modify one’s emotions represents a domain in which age-related growth is
possible. In this chapter, we integrate the literatures on aging, emotion regulation, and
occupational stress and well-being. To this end, we review key theories and empirical
findings in each of these areas, summarize existing research on age, emotion regulation, and
stress and well-being at work, and develop a conceptual model on how aging affects emotion
regulation and the stress process in work settings to guide future research. According to the
model, age will affect (1) what kinds of affective work events are encountered and how often,
(2) the appraisal of and initial emotional response to affective work events (emotion
generation), and (3) the management of emotions and coping with affective work events
(emotion regulation). The model has implications for researchers and practitioners who want
to understand and facilitate successful emotion regulation and stress reduction in the
workplace among different age groups.
Keywords: aging, age, lifespan, emotion regulation, stress, strain, well-being
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Progressively, the workforce is aging, and organizations are increasingly interested in
attracting, retaining, and motivating older employees. In spite of this demographic trend,
existing theories and empirical research on work stress and well-being have by and large
ignored possible age-related differences in the occupational stress process (see Rauschenbach
& Hertel, 2011; Rauschenbach, Krumm, Thielgen, & Hertel, in press, for two recent
exceptions). Existing studies have either included only young adults (such as employed
college students), or have treated age as a noise variable that needed to be controlled.
Similarly, extant research on the regulation of emotions in the workplace as a way to prevent
occupational stress and increase employee well-being has not paid attention to age-related
differences (Lawrence, Troth, Jordan, & Collins, 2011). This leaves us with a striking lack of
knowledge about work stress and emotion regulation in aging employees who make up an
increasingly larger proportion of the workforce.
Fortunately, several decades of research in lifespan developmental psychology have
created a rich knowledge base on general age-associated changes in life contexts as well as
emotional experience and regulation, which can form a fruitful basis for theoretical
assumptions about how aging affects work stress and well-being. For example, research
shows that emotional changes with age are surprisingly positive and characterized by
maintenance and even growth (Charles & Carstensen, 2010; Scheibe & Carstensen, 2010). At
the same time, such positive age trends in emotional functioning are qualified by important
individual and contextual differences. The goal of this chapter is to weave together two
hitherto disconnected streams of literature – the literature on occupational stress, well-being,
and emotion regulation and the literature on emotional aging – to develop a model of how
aging and age-related changes affect emotion regulation and the stress process in work
settings. The model is depicted in Figure 1, and its elements and underlying propositions will
be explained in the following sections.
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LIFESPAN PERSPECTIVE ON EMOTION REGULATION AND STRESS AT WORK
We will first provide the foundations of the model by reviewing how affective work
events influence employee strain and well-being, and we will describe how emotion
generation and emotion regulation may impact on stress and well-being processes. Secondly,
we describe when and how emotional experience and reactivity change across the adult life
span, and how these changes may be driven by age-related changes in life contexts, emotion
generation, and emotional regulation. Finally, we integrate these perspectives to outline an
integrative set of propositions on how the process of aging creates shifting internal and
external contexts that affect occupational stress and well-being processes via event
occurrence, emotion generation, and emotion regulation. We close by proposing directions
for future research.
OCCUPATIONAL STRESS AND WELL-BEING AND THE ROLE OF EMOTION
REGULATION
The basic elements of our model shown in Figure 1 are adapted from the transactional
stress model (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984), which is a well-established stress theory that
outlines the processes leading from work stressors (i.e., objective events in the work
environment that are perceived as challenging by most employees) to employee strain (i.e.,
short-term psychological reactions to the stressor). The transactional stress model suggests
that people’s responses to stressors are influenced by individual differences in stressor
appraisal (i.e., people’s initial interpretation and re-interpretation of the objective stressors
and their own resources) and coping strategies (e.g., problem-focused and emotion-focused
coping; Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). Based on affective events theory (Weiss & Cropanzano,
1996), we include not only negative work events (i.e., stressors) but also positive work events
as predictors in our model. In addition, our outcomes comprise both employee strain and
well-being as emotional responses. The link between affective events and responses is
mediated by attention and appraisal processes.
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In recent years, increasing attention has been paid to emotion-regulatory processes as
moderators of relationships among occupational stressors, strain, and well-being (Lawrence,
et al., 2011). As noted by Gross and Thompson (2007), people do not just passively witness
their emotional reactions to the events that occur, including affective work events, but are
trying to influence what they feel, how intensely they feel and show their emotions, and how
long emotions last. This perspective suggests that emotional reactivity to a discrete event is
the result of two interactive processes, emotion generation and emotion regulation (Gross,
Sheppes, & Urry, 2011). Emotion generation refers to the initial emotional response that
arises when persons encounter a situation that impedes or facilitates their personal goals,
allocate attention to the goal-relevant aspects of the situation, and make the primary appraisal
that the situation facilitates or interferes with current goals (Gross & Thompson, 2007;
Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). For example, encountering an angry customer on the phone may
impede a call center employee’s goal to do his job smoothly and quickly, which when
attended to and appraised as such, may lead to a subjective, physiological, and behavioral
anger response.
Emotion regulation refers to a person’s attempt to modify the emotion-generative
process, such as when the call center employee tries to reframe the situation to feel less angry
or to not let his anger show in his voice. This example illustrates the concept of emotional
labor, defined as “the effort, planning, and control needed to express organizationally desired
emotion during interpersonal transactions” (Morris & Feldman, 1996, p. 987). Even though it
is difficult, if not impossible, to dissect the processes of emotion generation and regulation
empirically (Gross, et al., 2011), the distinction is useful when trying to understand age
differences in emotional responses to affective work events. As shown in Figure 1 and
discussed in the next section, aging-associated processes can influence the generation and the
regulation of emotions.
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LIFESPAN PERSPECTIVE ON EMOTION REGULATION AND STRESS AT WORK
Emotions can be regulated in many different ways. Gross’ (1998) influential model of
emotion regulation distinguishes five families of emotion regulation strategies according to
the time point that they intervene in the emotion-generative process. Antecedent-focused
strategies intervene before the emotion-generative process has fully unfolded, and hence,
before the emotional response has been fully activated. These include situation selection (e.g.,
postponing or avoiding an unpleasant phone call), situation modification (e.g., saying
something to calm down an angry customer), attentional deployment (e.g., ignoring an angry
commentary by the customer), and cognitive change (e.g., reframing the unpleasant phone
conversation as a learning opportunity). Coping strategies as discussed in the transactional
stress model (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984) can be placed in this framework; problem-oriented
coping would mostly fall under situation modification, and emotion-focused coping would
fall under either situation modification (e.g., seeking emotional support) or cognitive change
(e.g., reappraisal). The family of response-focused strategies targets the emotional response
itself; thus, they act after the emotional response is fully evolved. An example is suppressing
any outward sign of anger when feeling angry subjectively and physiologically. A related
distinction between strategies proposed by Lawrence et al. (2011) is that between emotion
experience regulation (comprising all four families of antecedent-focused strategies) and
emotion expression regulation (comprising the response-focused strategies of suppression or
amplification).
In the literature on emotional labor, deep acting is an example of emotional
experience regulation and has been mapped onto attentional deployment and cognitive
change; while surface acting corresponds to emotional response regulation (Grandey, 2000).
Sometimes, employees’ emotional experience aligns naturally with organizational display
rules, such that no emotion regulation is necessary, at least at the conscious level; this is
called naturally felt emotions (Diefendorff, Croyle, & Gosserand, 2005). Many studies have
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shown that people’s habitual use of emotional labor strategies is an important moderator of
the link between interpersonal stressors and occupational well-being (Lawrence, et al., 2011).
Consistent with predictions by Gross (1998) that response-focused emotion regulation
strategies are less effective and more costly than antecedent-focused strategies, surface acting
appears to be the most harmful emotional labor strategy as it is linked with increased levels of
emotional exhaustion and depersonalization. In contrast, deep acting does not appear to
impair well-being; positive associations were found between habitual use of deep acting and
personal accomplishment, job satisfaction, and work performance (Lawrence, et al., 2011).
Naturally felt emotions are assumed to require the least mental energy and thus, are the least
harmful (Diefendorff, et al., 2005).
Further evidence that habitual emotion regulation strategy use is linked to
occupational strain and well-being comes from research on psychological detachment, the
active attempt to refrain from job-related thoughts when being away from the workplace – a
form of attentional deployment. For instance, Sonnentag, Binnewies, and Mojza (2010)
demonstrated that psychological detachment buffered the detrimental effects of high job
demands on emotional exhaustion, psychosomatic complaints, and work engagement.
Additionally, the large literature on coping supports the moderating role of emotionregulation in occupational stress. For example, a two-wave panel study with blue collar
workers across one year showed that seeking emotional support during times of distress (a
form of emotion-focused coping, or situation modification) buffered the effect of emotional
job demands on emotional exhaustion (Van de Ven, van den Tooren, & Vlerick, 2013). Using
experience-sampling, Schmitt, Zacher, and Frese (2012) showed that the use of selection,
optimization, and compensation strategies – which represent examples of situation selection,
modification, and coping – was positively related to daily job satisfaction, and buffered the
positive relationship between daily problem solving demands and fatigue.
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LIFESPAN PERSPECTIVE ON EMOTION REGULATION AND STRESS AT WORK
In sum, the transactional stress model and models of emotion regulation highlight the
key factors and processes leading from affective work events to occupational strain and wellbeing, as well as potential moderators of these processes (Figure 1). Employee age may not
only impact directly on core factors in the stress and well-being process, but may also
influence relationship among affective work events, strain, and well-being.
HOW AGING AFFECTS EMOTIONAL EXPERIENCE AND REACTIVITY TO
AFFECTIVE WORK EVENTS
In the following section, we review the state of knowledge on age-related differences
in emotional experience and reactivity, and present different explanations for the generally
positive trajectory of emotional aging, which likely impacts how older employees experience
and react to affective work events.
Age Differences in Everyday Affective Experience
Studies of affective experience across adulthood show that the overall profile of
affective experience in daily life becomes more positive with age at least until after people
reach retirement age (Carstensen, Pasupathi, Mayr, & Nesselroade, 2000; Kessler &
Staudinger, 2009; Lawton, Kleban, Rajagopal, & Dean, 1992). For example, a recent
longitudinal study of repeatedly sampled emotional experience across 10 years showed
increased affect balance (operationalized as the average difference between momentary
positive and negative affect) with age until a peak is reached at age 64, after which the
increase levels off (Carstensen et al., 2011). The same study and others (e.g., Brose,
Schmiedek, Lövdén, & Lindenberger, 2011) found that mood fluctuations decrease as people
age, and periods of negative mood are more short-lived than in young adulthood (Carstensen,
et al., 2000).
Age-related changes in the personality traits neuroticism and extraversion, as well as
general job attitudes, parallel age trajectories towards more positive and stable emotional
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lives. A comprehensive meta-analysis on personality change across adulthood found that just
as younger adults differ from each other, so do older adults, with rank-order stability
remaining largely constant (Roberts & DelVecchio, 2000; Roberts, Walton, & Viechtbauer,
2006). At the same time, mean-level change is found such that mean levels of neuroticism are
reduced at older ages, whereas some facets of extraversion – particularly social dominance –
are increased. Increased positivity with age is also evident in job attitudes; older employees
tend to report higher satisfaction with their job, pay, and supervisor, higher levels of
organizational identification and loyalty, and lower levels of burnout and interpersonal
conflict (Ng & Feldman, 2010).
A closer look at different types and dimensions of affective life reveals that emotional
experiences tend to be less negative and calmer at older ages. On the valence dimension,
reduced negative affect is more consistently found than increased positive affect (Senescac &
Scheibe, in press). Arousal also matters. Within positive affect, low-arousal positive states
(e.g., relaxation, peace of mind) show the strongest age-related increase (Kessler &
Staudinger, 2009; Scheibe, English, Tsai, & Carstensen, 2013), while within negative affect,
high-arousal states (especially anger) show the strongest age-related decrease (Ross &
Mirowsky, 2008; Stone, Schwartz, Broderick, & Deaton, 2010). In sum, there is an agerelated increase in the quality and stability of emotional experience in everyday life, which is
mainly due to reductions in the experience of negative and high-arousal affective states, such
as anger.
Age Differences in Affective Reactivity
Apart from investigating typical emotional experiences in everyday life, lifespan
researchers have studied how adults of different ages react to discrete affective events in the
laboratory and in daily life. At an early attentional stage, a well-documented finding is the
positivity effect, indicating a relative avoidance of negative material and prioritization of
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positive material in older adults compared to younger adults (Reed & Carstensen, 2012). For
example, when shown pairs of faces, one sad or angry and one neutral, older adults orient
away from the negative faces more so than young adults (Mather & Carstensen, 2003) and
are better able to inhibit negative information when asked to do so (Hahn, Carlson, Singer, &
Gronlund, 2006). When given a choice between positive and negative information, older
adults show a relative preference for the positive material (e.g., Charles, Mather, &
Carstensen, 2003). Related biases are found in decision-making and memory for emotional
material (Reed & Carstensen, 2012).
Older adults appraise and react to many laboratory stimuli in a less negative way than
younger adults (Charles & Carstensen, 2010). In one study where younger and older adults
listened to audiotapes of people supposedly making negative remarks about them, the older
adults made less critical appraisals of the people speaking and reported feeling less angry,
though they felt equally sad (Charles & Carstensen, 2008). According to meta-analytical
evidence, physiological responding, in particular heart rate reactivity, is also relatively
reduced in older adults in laboratory studies of emotional reactivity, with an important
qualification: when the stressful event is highly intense, age differences often reverse and
systolic blood pressure reactivity in particular tends to be larger with age (Uchino,
Birmingham, & Berg, 2010).
Older adults also appraise daily hassles in their lives less negatively and their
affective reactivity to daily stressors is reduced across many (though not all) studies (Riediger
& Rauers, in press). Daily hassles are minor stressors, such as arguments, acute health
problems, or work overload, which lead to temporary changes in affect (Almeida, 2005). In
the large-scale National Study of Daily Experiences, a diary study across eight days with a
sample spanning young to old adulthood, relatively older adults were found to appraise daily
hassles as less severe than younger adults (Charles & Almeida, 2007). The same study and
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others found that affective reactivity (operationalized as increase in negative affect on stress
days compared to non-stress days) tends to be reduced with age, especially for interpersonal
conflicts (e.g., Birditt, Fingerman, & Almeida, 2005). One study also found that physical
reactivity (the occurrence of mild health problems on stress vs. non-stress days) was reduced
with age (Neupert, Almeida, & Charles, 2007). Few studies have considered physiological
stress reactivity in daily life. Uchino, Berg, Smith, Pearce, and Skinner (2006) report a
dissociation between subjective and physiological responding to daily stressors from middle
to later adulthood: compared to middle-aged adults, older adults displayed less of an increase
in subjective distress but heightened blood pressure reactivity to daily stress.
Important moderators of stress reactivity and age differences therein are also apparent.
First, as the emotional load of daily hassles increases, age differences appear to reverse.
Emotional load could be indicated by high severity, chronicity, or complexity of daily
stressors. Older adults display larger affective reactivity than younger adults when stressors
are weighted by their perceived severity (Mroczek & Almeida, 2004), and larger affective
and physiological reactivity when stressors concern multiple life domains as compared to just
one domain (Wrzus, Müller, Wagner, Lindenberger, & Riediger, 2012).
Second, affective stress reactivity is moderated by chronic stress. Among people with
many chronic health conditions, older adults were found to react more strongly to daily
hassles than younger adults (Piazza, Charles, & Almeida, 2007). Perceiving one’s life as
generally stressful was associated with a higher frequency of stressors in older adults, though
it was also associated with increased affective reactivity to stressors in younger adults
(Stawski, Sliwinski, Almeida, & Smyth, 2008). A study among teachers compared responses
of the autonomic nervous system (heart rate, cortisol excretion, and psychosomatic
symptoms) to work periods of low and high global perceived stress (Ritvanen, Louhevaara,
Helin, Väisänen, & Hänninen, 2006). In young teachers, autonomic responses were elevated
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during high work stress periods, relative to low work stress periods. In contrast, older
teachers’ autonomic responses remained high even in low work stress periods, indicating
reduced recovery from the stress.
Third, affective reactivity is moderated by perceived control. A high sense of mastery
was found to buffer reactivity to interpersonal stressors for all age groups, the physical effects
of work stressors in young and older adults, and the emotional reactivity to network stressors
(something happened to a friend or family member) in middle-aged adults (Neupert, et al.,
2007).
Fourth, affective reactivity is moderated by the type of affective work events. Using a
sample of service employees, nurses and academics, Mauno, Ruokolainen, and Kinnunen
(2012) investigated whether the relationships between a number of indicators of job stressors
(i.e., job insecurity, workload, and work-family conflict) and several measures of well-being
(i.e., work-family enrichment, job and life satisfaction, vigor at work) were moderated by
age. Younger nurses and service employees were less affected by high levels of job insecurity
than their older counterparts with regard to some of the outcome variables. In contrast, older
service employees and academics were less affected by high levels of workload and workfamily conflict, respectively. Thus, what type of event is perceived as stressful may differ by
age.
In conclusion, most studies of negative affective reactivity to discrete events indicate
that, on average, older adults react less strongly than their younger counterparts. At the same
time, affective reactivity and age differences therein are moderated by several factors. High
emotion-regulatory load and chronic stress diminish or reverse age advantages, while high
personal control buffers against strong reactivity in all age groups. Age differences in
negative affective reactivity may also depend on the type of stressor (e.g., interpersonal
conflict versus workload).
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Explaining Age Differences in Affective Experience and Reactivity
Several explanations have been formulated to account for age-related differences in
affective experience and reactivity across adulthood. Four prominent explanations focus on
changes in life contexts, biological changes in emotion-generative systems, changes in
emotion regulation motivation, and changes in emotion regulation competence (Senescac &
Scheibe, in press). These will be reviewed next, together with evidence supporting or
qualifying them.
Changes in Life Contexts
A first way in which aging may affect emotional experience and reactivity is via
changes in normative demands and control opportunities arising from life phase-specific roles
and developmental tasks (Almeida & Horn, 2004). These shifting demands and roles create
different life contexts in which affective events are encountered. Young adulthood is often
the time where people choose an occupation, start a career, and establish marriage and a
family. Midlife is the time where people juggle work and family demands, experience career
transitions, re-enter work after years of caring for small children, or renegotiate family
relationships. Caregiving tasks in midlife do not only involve children, but increasingly also
caring for aging parents (Zacher & Winter, 2011). The later part of the working lifespan falls
into the early stages of older adulthood, marked by an increasing prevalence of chronic health
problems, cognitive slowing, physical decline, and declining career opportunities. The
working lifespan ends with retirement, which is considered a major role change associated
with loss of status but also greater freedom in selecting activities of daily life (Wang &
Shultz, 2010).
These age-related patterns of changing demands and roles across life have led to the
hypothesis that daily life is particularly stressful during midlife, which may explain age
differences in occupational stress (Almeida & Horn, 2004; Warr, 1992). This hypothesis is
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consistent with findings by Rauschenbach and Hertel (2011) of an inverted U-shaped
relationship between employee age and strain, as indicated by both general and daily
experience measures. Namely, strain was highest in middle-aged employees (aged 36 to 50
years), relative to younger and older employees, which the authors interpreted as result of
increased stress during midlife (see also Warr, 1992; White & Spector, 1987).
But do middle-aged adults really encounter stressful events more frequently than
other age groups? Studies of daily hassles among young and middle-aged adults do not fully
support this assumption, but instead show that age differences in stressor exposure may
depend on the type of stressor. Almeida and Horn (2004) find no difference between younger
adults (25-39 years) and middle-aged adults (40-59 years) in the overall number of stressful
daily events, but both age groups reported more events than older adults (60-74 years).
Neupert et al. (2007) found that middle-aged adults report less interpersonal events (whether
an argument or potential argument occurred) than young adults, but equal numbers of work
events (whether anything happened at work other than interpersonal conflicts that could be
stressful). At the same time, there is consistent evidence that life becomes less stressful after
midlife. Studies comparing discrete groups of young or early-middle-aged and older (mostly
retired) individuals show that advanced age is associated with reporting fewer daily hassles
(Brose, et al., 2011; Folkman, Lazarus, Pimley, & Novacek, 1987; Stawski, et al., 2008).
Age differences in event exposure can account for affective outcomes. It is harder to
maintain high levels of well-being when more stressful events are encountered not only
because of the accumulation of threats to well-being, but also because perceived global stress
is associated with increased reactivity to single events (Stawski, et al., 2008). Indeed, a recent
study found that stressor profiles explain part of the age advantages in affective well-being
(Brose, Scheibe, & Schmiedek, 2013). Matching groups of young and older adults on
contextual factors, including the number of experienced stressors, stressor heterogeneity, and
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stressor impact on daily routines significantly diminished age-related differences in affective
stability (operationalized as mood fluctuations across 100 days). However, matching of age
groups on stressor profiles did not explain why older adults had lower affective reactivity to
stressful events. Importantly, midlife has also been identified as a life phase characterized by
a peak in personal control in terms of social status and financial resources (Heckhausen,
Wrosch, & Schulz, 2010; Lachman, Lewkowicz, Marcus, & Peng, 1994). High levels of
personal control reduce affective reactivity to daily stressors (Neupert et al., 2007), which
may balance out the effects of increased global stress.
In sum, age-graded differences in life contexts are one plausible factor underlying
improved emotional outcomes at advanced age, and a possible peak in occupational strain in
midlife. Due to different normative demands and resources, the kinds of stressful daily events
encountered differ across age groups, for example, interpersonal conflicts are reduced with
age. Overall, there appears to be a high density of stressful events in midlife compared to
older adulthood, though midlife does not necessarily appear to be more stressful than young
adulthood.
Biological Changes in Emotion-Generative Systems
The biological perspective on age differences in emotional well-being emerged out of
a variety of findings that older adults are less physiologically reactive to emotional events in
the laboratory (Tsai, Levenson, & Carstensen, 2000). This perspective suggests that physical
changes with age, such as degradation of interoceptive, neural and autonomic systems, inhibit
the emotion-generative process (Cacioppo, Berntson, Bechara, Tranel, & Hawkley, 2011;
Mendes, 2010). As a result, negative stimuli and events would lose some of their potency to
challenge emotional well-being at older ages. There is evidence of decline in interoceptive
systems, lowering older adults’ awareness of bodily signals such as sensory sensations,
heartbeat, and pain, which are important signals that contribute to the emotional experience
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(Mather, 2012). More striking are neuroimaging findings that emotion-generative brain areas,
particularly the amygdala, are less reactive to negative stimuli at higher ages (Kisley, Wood,
& Burrows, 2007; Mather et al., 2004), which in turn should result in diminished
physiological arousal responses to affective events. Structural degradation and functional
slowing of the autonomous nervous system may further diminish the physiological arousal
response (Cacioppo, et al., 2011). All of these biological changes could lead older adults to
experience negative events as less impactful.
Even though biological processes are probably important, the biological perspective
can at best partially explain emotional gains in well-being with age. Reduced responding of
the amygdala could well indicate increased emotion regulation. Neuroimaging studies in
which younger and older participants are instructed to down-regulate negative feelings while
viewing emotional material show a coupling between reduced amygdala activation and
increased activation in prefrontal brain regions responsible for emotional control (SamanezLarkin & Carstensen, 2011). The amygdala also remains sensitive to stimulus characteristics
other than valence, such as novelty (Wright, Wedig, Williams, Rauch, & Albert, 2006).
Furthermore, the hypothesis of diminished emotion generation in older individuals
contrasts the findings reviewed above that under high emotional load, affective and stress
reactivity is actually increased in older adults relative to younger adults. Charles (2010)
recently proposed the model of strength and vulnerability integration, suggesting that older
adults are well able to maintain affective well-being when confronted with mild to moderate
stressors, or when they are able to avoid negative events, due to emotional competence
acquired throughout their lives (see below). However, when the emotional event becomes
intense, enduring, or unavoidable, the slowing of physiological systems may backfire. That
is, when the affective event is strong enough to arouse older adults’ physiological systems,
older adults appear to have difficulty down-regulating arousal.
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Taken together, biological changes with age affect the emotion-generative process to
some extent, but the emotional load of the event and older adults’ control resources likely
determine whether biological changes improve or worsen emotional outcomes. Biological
changes with age are assumed to reduce the negative impact of mild or controllable stressors,
while increasing the impact of strong or unavoidable stressors.
Changes in Emotion-Regulation Motivation
A third way in which aging may influence emotional experience and reactivity is via
changes in emotion regulation, including the motivation to experience or avoid certain
affective states. Even if a negative affective event initially leads to a comparable emotional
response (subjectively and/or physiologically), it is possible that older adults are more
motivated than younger adults to defuse the negative response quickly and maintain positive
affect. Several lifespan theories propose that older adults are by default more motivated than
younger adults to regulate emotions in a pro-hedonic way (i.e., maximize positive and
minimize negative affect), with each theory highlighting a different mechanism for this
motivational shift.
In her socioemotional selectivity theory, Carstensen (2006) suggests that individuals’
future time perspective determines goals, preferences, and even cognitive processing. The
theory makes a distinction between emotional goals (i.e., goals related to experiencing
emotional meaning and satisfaction in the present moment) and resource acquisition goals
(i.e., goals related to learning, building up a social network, or taking risks to improve future
outcomes). Whenever people’s sense of remaining time is limited, either because of advanced
age or when encountering situations where endings are salient, people are inclined to
prioritize emotional goals. Vice versa, when sense of remaining time is expansive, as is
typical at younger ages, people are inclined to prioritize resource acquisition goals that serve
them well in the future. The theory has been the basis of a large variety of studies on the
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above mentioned positivity effect in processing, appraising, and remembering emotional
stimuli (Reed & Carstensen, 2012, provide a recent overview). The basic rationale is that
older adults prioritize positive over negative information because it serves their emotional
goals to optimize well-being.
Dynamic integration theory by Labouvie-Vief (2003) makes a similar prediction as
Carstensen’s theory that older adults are more motivated to optimize well-being, but
conceptualizes this motivational shift as a compensatory response to later-life decline in
cognitive resources. The theory assumes that processing negative information and tolerating
negative states, especially those high in arousal, is cognitively demanding. Consequently,
cognitive limitations as typically seen with aging lead people to prefer affect optimization
over affect complexity. Yet, such a motivational shift away from affect complexity does not
appear to be linear; instead, empirical data shows a peak in affect complexity in midlife (the
50s). In essence, both theories predict that older adults are – as a default – more motivated to
regulate emotions so as to optimize well-being, which should be driven – and likely
modulated – by changes in future time perspective and cognitive abilities. This hypothesis
was empirically supported in an experience-sampling study by Riediger, Schmiedek, Wagner,
and Lindenberger (2009). In this study, which included adolescents all the way to the very
old, age was associated with higher pro-hedonic motivation such that relatively older
participants were more likely than younger participants to report that they wanted to dampen
negative affect and maintain positive affect across multiple measurement occasions.
A more recent prediction that follows from the above described theories is a shift in
arousal preferences. Namely, with age, people may increasingly prefer low-arousal states
over high-arousal states, independent of valence. Both the model of strength and vulnerability
integration (Charles, 2010) as well as dynamic integration theory (Labouvie-Vief, 2003)
suggest that older adults have difficulty tolerating or regulating high arousal, due to decline in
18
LIFESPAN PERSPECTIVE ON EMOTION REGULATION AND STRESS AT WORK
physiological flexibility and cognitive control. In particular, shifts in arousal preferences
were demonstrated for positive affect (Scheibe, et al., 2013). Participants aged 18 to 94 were
asked how often they want to ideally experience two types of ideal positive affect, low
arousal positive affect (relaxation, peacefulness) and high-arousal positive affect (excitement,
enthusiasm). Results indicate that with increasing age, low-arousal positive affect is
increasingly preferred over high-arousal positive affect. Ideal affect also better matched older
adults’ experienced affect across a week of experience-sampling. Related to this, a linguistic
analysis of personal blogs published on the internet revealed that younger people are more
likely to associate happiness with excitement (a high-arousal positive emotion), whereas
older people are more likely to associate happiness with peacefulness (a low-arousal positive
emotion) (Mogilner, Kamvar, & Aaker, 2011). This age difference is thought to be driven by
a redirection of attention from the future to the present, an assumption consistent with
socioemotional selectivity theory (Carstensen, 2006). Within the negative affect space,
arousal preferences were not yet directly assessed, but evidence indicates that high arousal
negative states are perceived as more aversive at higher ages. When rating emotional
pictures, older adults rate highly-arousing negative pictures as more negative than younger
adults (Grühn & Scheibe, 2008; Keil & Freund, 2009).
In sum, higher age is associated with a higher motivation to avoid or defuse affective
states that are negative and/or high in arousal. This shift in motivation is attributed to shifting
priorities as time becomes limited, as well as decline in physiological flexibility and
cognition.
Changes in Emotion-Regulation Competence
A fourth way that aging may influence emotional experience and reactivity is via
improvements in emotion regulation competence (Blanchard-Fields, 2007; Senescac &
Scheibe, in press). Imagining a situation where two people, young and old, are equally
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LIFESPAN PERSPECTIVE ON EMOTION REGULATION AND STRESS AT WORK
motivated to defuse negative or high arousal states, the older person may be more successful
in achieving their regulatory goal. Throughout life, people encounter affective events, both
minor and major, and to the extent that they learn to successfully resolve these situations,
they likely accumulate expertise in regulating their emotions. Emotion regulation competence
refers to setting adaptive emotion regulation goals, selecting appropriate strategies of emotion
regulation, and implementing strategies effectively and efficiently.
Strategy choice. When considering Gross’ (1998) model of emotion regulation, a
general hypothesis is that older adults use antecedent-focused emotion regulation strategies
more often, and response-focused strategies less often than younger adults (Charles &
Carstensen, 2010). Antecedent-focused strategies are generally more effective and less
cognitively demanding than response-focused strategies, because the emotion-generative
process is interrupted before the full emotional response has developed (Gross, 1998). Crosssectional evidence attests an age-related increase in the self-reported use of reappraisal,
coupled with an age-related decrease in use of suppression (John & Gross, 2004). Similarly,
in work contexts that involve emotional labor, older employees report using deep acting more
often, and surface acting less often than younger employees (Cheung & Tang, 2010; Dahling
& Perez, 2010).
Zooming in on antecedent-focused strategies, a variety of findings suggest that older
adults prefer less cognitively demanding strategies over more demanding strategies. The
motivational theory of lifespan development (Heckhausen, et al., 2010) holds that people
adjust coping strategies to their changing ability to control their environment. In young age,
primary control strategies that change external circumstances are preferred. In contrast, older
adults shift to using secondary control strategies that change the self in order to adjust to
environmental demands; these are often less cognitively demanding than primary control
strategies. Supporting this view, Folkman et al. (1987) found older adults to employ less
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LIFESPAN PERSPECTIVE ON EMOTION REGULATION AND STRESS AT WORK
active, interpersonal, and problem-focused coping behaviors, but more passive, intrapersonal,
and emotion-focused strategies than younger adults. Research on everyday problem solving
shows when confronted with emotionally laden problems, which are mostly interpersonal in
nature, older adults include emotion-focused coping as part of their problem solving more
than younger adults (Blanchard-Fields, 2007). Experts rate older adults’ strategy choices in
such types of situations as more effective (Blanchard-Fields, Mienaltowski, & Seay, 2007).
One study in the work context found that when dealing specifically with interpersonal
conflicts at work, older employees tend to use more often non-confrontational responses
(yielding, delay responding), while they were equally likely to make an effort to solve the
problem constructively, as assessed via peer reports (Davis, Kraus, & Capobianco, 2009).
Importantly, when dealing with instrumental problems (e.g., resolving a computer failure),
both young and older adults appear to use problem-focused coping (Blanchard-Fields, 2007).
This suggests that older adults tailor their coping strategies to contexts (interpersonal vs.
instrumental) more so than younger adults, and tend to choose less cognitively demanding
regulatory strategies especially during emotionally laden everyday problems.
Strategy effectiveness. Due to their increased life experience, older adults may be
more effective in implementing emotion regulation strategies. In self-report studies, older
adults report higher general control of their emotions than younger adults, which statistically
mediates age-related improvements in affective well-being (Kessler & Staudinger, 2009;
Lawton, et al., 1992). In terms of emotional labor, older employees are more likely to report
that their felt emotions naturally align with organizational display rules (Dahling & Perez,
2010), a sign of successful enactment of either antecedent-focused emotion regulation
strategies and/or more implicit forms of emotion regulation (Gyurak, Gross, & Etkin, 2011).
Older adults were further found to score higher than younger adults on the emotion
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LIFESPAN PERSPECTIVE ON EMOTION REGULATION AND STRESS AT WORK
management subtest of the MSCEIT, a widely used multiple-choice test of emotional
intelligence (Kafetsios, 2004).
Experience-sampling evidence suggests that older adults are more effective in
avoiding arguments in interpersonal conflict situations, a form of situation modification, and
their affective benefit from avoiding arguments is higher than that of younger adults (Charles,
Piazza, Luong, & Almeida, 2009). Several laboratory studies have instructed participants to
use particular emotion regulation strategies to down-regulate negative emotion responses to
pictures, film clips, or personal problems. In these studies, older adults showed superior
ability to implement some regulatory strategies, though not others. Namely, positive
refocusing (a kind of attentional deployment) and positive reappraisal (a form of cognitive
change) are more effectively implemented by older adults than younger adults, as indicated
by subjective and physiological outcomes (Phillips, Henry, Hosie, & Milne, 2008; Shiota &
Levenson, 2009). In contrast, older adults are no more effective than younger adults to
implement expressive suppression, and are even less effective than young adults in
implementing detached reappraisal (thinking about the emotional situation in an objective
way; Shiota & Levenson, 2009). Likely these kinds of strategies are less often utilized by
older adults, leaving them less well practiced.
Cognitive costs of strategy implementation. Implementing any emotion regulation
strategy requires some level of cognitive control, but the amount of cognitive control needed
to successfully enact a given strategy may decrease when it becomes automatized (Chein &
Schneider, 2005). If people routinely and successfully use particular emotion regulation
strategies in particular contexts over a long period of time, these strategies should become
activated more automatically and therefore are less effortful (Senesac & Scheibe, in press).
Such automatization processes may occur with aging. As a result, emotion regulation can
22
LIFESPAN PERSPECTIVE ON EMOTION REGULATION AND STRESS AT WORK
become more efficient with age, so that fewer cognitive resources are needed to reach the
same regulatory outcome.
Supporting this idea, Scheibe and Blanchard-Fields (2009) found that when younger
adults were instructed to defuse negative affect after a disgust induction, their performance on
a concurrent working memory task was compromised, but no performance drop occurred in
older adults. Emery and Hess (2011) found older adults, relative to young adults, had lower
memory costs when instructed to suppress emotional expressions while viewing negative
pictures. This finding could indicate that older adults had to devote fewer attentional
resources to maintaining a neutral expression, so that more attention could be devoted to
encoding the emotional material. A further study showed differential cognitive effort was
needed to enact emotional experience regulation versus emotional expression regulation in
younger and older adults (Senesac, 2010). Older adults required more resources (indicated by
performance drops in a Stroop task performed after the emotion regulation task) to regulate
(i.e., suppress) emotion expressions than emotion experience, while the opposite applies to
young adults. This may partly explain age differences in strategy choices mentioned above.
Taken together, emotional competence in many ways appears to increase with age.
There is evidence that older adults (1) choose more effective and/or less cognitively
demanding emotion regulations strategies, (2) are more effective in implementing certain
(though not all) emotion regulation strategies, and (3) require less cognitive resource to
implement specific strategies.
TOWARDS AN INTEGRATIVE MODEL: HOW AGING AFFECTS THE
OCCUPATIONAL STRESS AND WELL-BEING PROCESS
In the previous sections, we reviewed theories and findings on occupational stress and
well-being as well as emotional aging, two bodies of literatures that have been disconnected
to date. In the current section, we will draw together these two literatures to formulate an
23
LIFESPAN PERSPECTIVE ON EMOTION REGULATION AND STRESS AT WORK
integrated model of how aging – via associations with changing life context, emotion
generation, and emotion regulation – may influence the occupational stress and well-being
process (see Figure 1). The model includes core elements and processes of the transactional
stress model (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984) and affective events theory (Weiss & Cropanzano,
1996) and outlines how recent advancements in the study of emotion regulation in the
lifespan literature may inform our understanding of work-related stress and well-being. We
will further identify moderating factors that likely determine when age-related differences or
change will be positive or negative. We describe our model in terms of a set of propositions.
Specifying the Nature of the Variable “Age”
Before discussing the role of age in the occupational stress and well-being process, it
is important to have a closer look at the variable “age.” Throughout the chapter we have
mentioned normative age-related changes, such as reductions of future time perspective,
cognitive decline, physiological slowing, motivational shifts, and life context changes, which
have been used to explain age-related changes in emotional functioning. This list highlights
one important theme, namely that chronological age by itself is an “empty variable” that is
only given meaning through its association with normative changes in different domains of
functioning. Even though normative changes occur, there are large interindividual differences
in age-associated change (Nesselroade, 1991). People “age” at very different rates within and
across domains, and at any point in the lifespan, development is plastic and modifiable
(Baltes, Lindenberger, & Staudinger, 2006). Indeed, while chronological age is a reliable
predictor of what people are capable to do, strive for, and are willing to do in childhood and
at very advanced ages, this is much less true for the working lifespan. Consistent with this
notion, several recent meta-analyses on age differences in the work context find only minimal
or no age differences (Kooij, De Lange, Jansen, Kanfer, & Dikkers, 2011; Ng & Feldman,
2010; Rauschenbach, et al., in press).
24
LIFESPAN PERSPECTIVE ON EMOTION REGULATION AND STRESS AT WORK
Consequently, we suggest that employee strain and well-being will be the result of
multiple, interacting processes related to chronological age. Researchers should pay attention
to variables beyond chronological age and consider their additive and interactive effects on
the stress and well-being process. Kooij, De Lange, Jansen, and Dikkers (2008) have
summarized five different conceptualizations of age. Besides (1) chronological age (years
since birth), these include (2) functional age (e.g., health status, cognitive abilities), (3)
psychosocial or subjective age (e.g., how old individuals feel, look, and behave), (4)
organizational age (years spent in an organization, i.e., tenure), and (5) life stage (e.g., family
status). These different factors may interact, add up, or sometimes even cancel each other out
in their impact on the occupational stress and well-being process. Moderation effects need
attention. For example, age differences in pro-hedonic emotion regulation motivation may
only be found at low levels of future time perspective or at low levels of cognitive
functioning. Age-related improvements in emotion regulation competence may be enhanced
to the extent that individuals have experienced the to-be-regulated event in the past and have
learned to successfully regulate it. This in turn, could be indicated by tenure. Hence,
occupational researchers interested in lifespan effects are well advised to measure multiple, if
not all five of the above mentioned “meanings of age”, and assess their additive and
interactive effects on occupational strain and well-being.
Aging and the Occurrence of Affective Work Events
Consistent with the notion of age-related changes in life contexts reviewed above,
employees’ age may influence what types of affective work events they encounter and how
frequently they encounter them. This is because people’s external circumstances change as
they age (Farr & Ringseis, 2002). Younger employees may face higher levels of job
insecurity than other age groups. Middle-aged employees might experience more conflict
between their work and home lives (e.g., caring for children and aging parents) than young
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LIFESPAN PERSPECTIVE ON EMOTION REGULATION AND STRESS AT WORK
and older employees (Zacher & Winter, 2011). While some stressors may become less
frequent with age, others may occur more often, such as age discrimination. Older employees
may be exposed to more negative interactions at the workplace than younger employees
because many people still have negative stereotypes about older employees that influence
how they treat these employees (Posthuma & Campion, 2009).
Additionally, multiple changes occur in people’s health, cognitive abilities,
personality, motives, and self-concept as they age (Kanfer & Ackerman, 2004; Warr, 2001).
These changes may influence people’s interaction with their environment and, in turn, the
experience of affective work events. For example, due to their increased generativity motive,
older adults may seek out mentoring experiences more often than young adults. This in turn,
may give rise to particular hassles (and also uplifts) associated with mentoring relationships.
Due to their longer tenure and job experience, older adults may be given more challenging
assignments, or less time to complete work tasks, which could make work overload and time
pressure more likely. For the same reasons, older adults may be given more job-related
autonomy, which could help them avoid certain stressors. For instance, White and Spector
(1987) found that perceived job congruence partially mediated the positive association
between age and job satisfaction. These considerations underscore the need for a fine-grained
look at types and frequencies of affective work events that different age groups encounter.
For instance, a number of studies have suggested a U-shaped relationship between age and
occupational well-being (Clark, Oswald, & Warr, 1996; Rauschenbach, et al., in press);
however, hardly any research has examined the life context changes that may explain this
relationship. Lifespan researchers have suggested multiple role commitments and increased
responsibility as potential mediators (Heckhausen, et al., 2010).
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LIFESPAN PERSPECTIVE ON EMOTION REGULATION AND STRESS AT WORK
Proposition 1: Changes in employees’ life contexts mediate the relationships between age
and age-related factors on the one hand and the occurrence of affective work events on the
other.
Proposition 1a: Middle-aged workers experience higher levels of strain and lower levels of
occupational well-being due to increased work-life conflict and work responsibilities.
Aging, Emotion Generation, and Emotional Response
As affective work events occur, age and age-related changes in physical and cognitive
functioning, personality, and motivation may influence how the emotion-generative cycle
unfolds and, in turn, people’s level of strain and well-being. By emotion generation, we mean
the (unregulated) attention-appraisal-response sequence specified in basic models of emotion
(Gross & Thompson, 2007; Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). The biological perspective on
emotional aging suggests that in many contexts of everyday life, biological changes of
interoceptive systems, emotion-sensitive brain areas, and the autonomic system lead older
adults to appraise and experience negative events as less impactful (Cacioppo, et al., 2011).
Above, we have also reviewed evidence that older adults appraise stressful events as less
negatively and attend more to positive than negative cues in their environment. The existing
evidence suggests this will mainly affect social stressors, such as interpersonal conflicts.
Yet, there can also be situations where older adults appraise affective work events,
especially physical stressors (noise, heat) and psychological stressors (workload, time
pressure) as more severe than younger adults. For example, Kanfer and Ackerman (2004)
suggested that older employees might experience jobs that require high levels of rapid
information processing as more stressful than younger employees due to age-related declines
in fluid intelligence. In addition, these authors argued that tasks requiring high levels of effort
should have lower utility for older employees due to their career stage and preference for
emotionally meaningful work goals. The model of strength and vulnerability integration
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LIFESPAN PERSPECTIVE ON EMOTION REGULATION AND STRESS AT WORK
(Charles, 2010) further suggests that older adults will have difficulties dealing with intense,
chronic, or unavoidable stressors, because their physiological system once activated takes
longer to recover. According to the “overpowering hypothesis” put forward by Wrzus and
colleagues (2012), older adults’ self-regulatory resources are overpowered in highly resourcedemanding situations. Consequently, researchers should pay attention to the nature and
emotion-regulatory load (intensity, duration, chronicity, and complexity) of affective events
that employees encounter, to attentional processes, and to primary appraisals employees
make when faced with stressful work events.
Proposition 2: The effect of age on the emotional response to affective work events is
mediated by emotion generation (via attention and appraisal processes), which in turn is
moderated by the nature of events.
Proposition 2a: With increasing age, individuals are less strongly affected by interpersonal
stressors and more strongly affected by non-interpersonal stressors.
Proposition 2b: When stressful events have a high emotion-regulatory load (indicated by
high intensity, duration, chronicity or complexity) older adults are equally or more strongly
affected than younger adults, independent of event type.
Aging, Emotion Regulation, and Emotional Response
It is further likely that age moderates the event-response relationship by impacting
emotion regulation and coping. Above, we have reviewed the current state of knowledge on
age-related differences in emotion regulation motivation and competence (indexed by
strategy choice, strategy implementation, and strategy efficiency). To the extent that older
adults perceive their future as more limited and are “cognitively and physically aged”, they
may be more motivated to defuse negative and high-arousal states quickly. To the extent that
older adults have acquired life experience dealing with potentially distressing situations, they
28
LIFESPAN PERSPECTIVE ON EMOTION REGULATION AND STRESS AT WORK
may make better choices in emotion regulation strategies and/or enact strategies more
effectively and efficiently.
At the same time, the work environment will determine the range of regulatory
options that older employees have at their disposal. For example, service jobs rarely provide
the option to use situation selection in interaction with customers (e.g., avoiding talking to an
unpleasant customer; Grandey, 2000). This may be the reason why older employees value
work autonomy, or job control highly (Kooij, et al., 2011); it gives them the opportunity to
use many antecedent-focused emotion regulation strategies that they prefer and can
implement effectively. In a recent study, Weigl, Müller, Hornung, Zacher, and Angerer
(2012) investigated age differences in work ability in a sample of nurses as a function of job
control and the use of self-regulatory strategies. Results showed that the negative relationship
between age and work ability was weakest for employees with high job control and high use
of self-regulatory strategies. This points to important interactive effects of people’s selfregulatory strategies and characteristics of the work environment in shaping occupational
outcomes.
Proposition 3: The effect of age on the emotional response is mediated by emotion
regulation.
Proposition 3a: Older adults are more motivated than younger adults to avoid or downregulate negative and/or high-arousal affect associated with affective work events.
Proposition 3b: Older adults are more effective and efficient in avoiding or down-regulating
negative and/or high-arousal affect resulting from affective work events, especially when the
occupational context supports the free choice of regulatory strategies.
FUTURE RESEARCH DIRECTIONS
Future research needs to employ suitable research designs to test the propositions
outlined in our model. It is notable that many of the reviewed studies on emotional aging,
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LIFESPAN PERSPECTIVE ON EMOTION REGULATION AND STRESS AT WORK
especially those conducted in the laboratory, have employed so-called “extreme age group
designs”. Thus, most of the laboratory studies have compared discrete groups of young adults
(typically in their 20s) and older adults (typically in their 60s to 80s), with no middle-aged
group in between. Given that older employees are technically middle-aged, and given that
age-related differences may not follow linear trends, the conclusions that can be gained for
middle-aged and older employees are restricted, though we believe a general pattern of
findings emerges from that literature that allows making predictions about aging and work
stress. That being said, more research on curvilinear relationships between age, emotion
regulation, and the components of the stress process is needed (Clark, et al., 1996). In Ng and
Feldman’s (2010) meta-analysis on age and different job attitudes, the relationship between
age and emotional exhaustion was one of the few relationships that were curvilinear in
nature. However, the studies included in the meta-analysis varied in the extent to which
samples with employees from different ages were included. Thus, future research with
sample spanning the whole working life span is needed.
Another limitation of most previous research on age and stress is the use of crosssectional research designs. These designs are useful to address the question whether people of
different ages differ with regard to different aspects of the stress process; however, they do
not answer the question whether the same people, over time, encounter different stressors,
appraise affective work events differently, and change in their strain and well-being as they
age. Longitudinal cohort-sequential studies on aging are needed to disentangle aging and
generational effects; unfortunately, such studies are very time consuming and cost-intensive.
Additionally, due to selectivity and the “healthy worker effect”, some of the mechanisms
underlying age-related change in emotional functioning may not apply to work settings. For
example, people with low cognitive status or poor health, which are hypothesized to drive
30
LIFESPAN PERSPECTIVE ON EMOTION REGULATION AND STRESS AT WORK
shifts in emotion regulation motivation, are likely to retire early. Consequently, the range of
cognitive or health variation may be diminished, reducing predictive power.
Another avenue for future research may be to integrate factors in the external work
environment in our model as resources and constraints. So far, the work environment is only
represented in the form of environmental demands or affective work events. We only hinted
at the potentially important role of job characteristics such as job autonomy, and how they
might interact with age in influencing the stress process. Two recent studies illustrate the
importance of examining interactions between employee age and work characteristics. Shultz,
Wang, Crimmins, and Fisher (2010) demonstrated that perceived job demands interact
differently with job control in different age groups in predicting occupational well-being.
Among younger employees, only the availability of sufficient time to complete tasks buffered
the effects of problem solving demands on strain. For older employees, sufficient time to
complete tasks and autonomy buffered the effect of deadlines on strain, and schedule
flexibility buffered the effect of problem solving demands on strain. More recently, Besen,
Matz-Costa, James, and Pitt-Catsouphes (2012) showed that perceived job and personal
control had different effects in the context of high job demands among younger and older
employees. Namely, job control buffered the negative relationship between job demands and
mental health among younger employees with high personal control. Among older
employees, only personal control buffered the link between job demands and mental health.
Thus, not only individual appraisals and skills, but also work characteristics may impact how
employees of different ages react to affective events.
In conclusion, we aimed in this chapter to integrate the literatures on aging, emotion
regulation, and occupational stress and well-being. Our integrative conceptual model is based
on a review of key theories and empirical findings in each of these areas. Future research that
tests the propositions of our model is now needed. Such research will contribute to a better
31
LIFESPAN PERSPECTIVE ON EMOTION REGULATION AND STRESS AT WORK
understanding of emotion regulation across the working life span, and to derive practical
implications for organizations interested in managing stress and maximizing well-being in the
workplace among different age groups.
32
LIFESPAN PERSPECTIVE ON EMOTION REGULATION AND STRESS AT WORK
Affective Work
Events
Attention and
Appraisal
Emotional
Responses (Strain
and Well-Being)
Proposition 3
Proposition 1
Proposition 2
Life Context
Emotion Generation
Emotion Regulation and
Coping (Motivation and
Competence)
Age
Chronological
Functional
Psychosocial
Organizational
Life stage
Figure 1. Schematic overview how aging may affect occupational stress and well-being processes.
33
LIFESPAN PERSPECTIVE ON EMOTION REGULATION AND STRESS AT WORK
34
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