Empathic Accuracy: Worse Recognition by Older Adults and Less Transparency in Older Adult Expressions Compared With Young Adults

Ted Ruffman, Jamin Halberstadt, Janice Murray, Fiona Jack, Tina Vater and Derek Isaacowitz

The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, 2020, vol. 75, issue 8, 1658-1667

Abstract: ObjectivesWe examined empathic accuracy, comparing young versus older perceivers, and young versus older emoters. Empathic accuracy is related to but distinct from emotion recognition because perceiver judgments of emotion are based, not on what an emoter looks to be feeling, but on what an emoter says s/he is actually feeling.MethodYoung (≤30 years) and older (≥60 years) adults (“emoters”) were unobtrusively videotaped while watching movie clips designed to elicit specific emotional states. The emoter videos were then presented to young and older “perceivers,” who were instructed to infer what the emoters were feeling.ResultsAs predicted, older perceivers’ empathic accuracy was less accurate relative to young perceivers. In addition, the emotions of young emoters were considerably easier to read than those of older emoters. There was also some evidence of an own-age advantage in emotion recognition in that older adults had particular difficulty assessing emotion in young faces.DiscussionThese findings have important implications for real-world social adjustment, with older adults experiencing a combination of less emotional transparency and worse understanding of emotional experience.

Keywords: Emotion experience; Emotion recognition; Transparency (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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The Journals of Gerontology: Series B is currently edited by Psychological Sciences - S. Duke Han, PhD and Social Sciences - Jessica A Kelley, PhD, FGSA

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