Characterizing age-related positivity effects in situation selection

Situation selection – choosing to enter or avoid situations based on how they will likely make you feel – is theorized to be a useful emotion regulation strategy, especially in older age. However, research on the use of situation selection for emotion regulation is limited, and the existing findings about age differences are mixed, with some studies finding age differences and others not. We investigated whether there are overall age differences in the types of emotional situations people select by conducting a “mini” meta-analysis to synthesize all existing data from a situation selection paradigm used in our laboratory. We also explored potential moderators of age differences in situation selection, including properties of the stimuli options and information available to participants. We did not find overall age differences in the emotional situations younger and older adults select, though age differences are larger in contexts in which emotional information is more relevant or highly arousing.