Stability and Change in Affective Experience Across the Adult Life Span: Analyses With a National Sample From Germany

Ute Kunzmann, David Richter and Stefan C. Schmukle

EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, 2013, vol. 13, issue 6, 1086-1095

Abstract: Using cross-sectional and longitudinal data from a national sample spanning the adult life span, age differences in anger and sadness were explored. The cross-sectional and longitudinal findings consistently suggest that the frequency of anger increases during young adulthood, but then shows a steady decrease until old age. By contrast, the frequency of sadness remains stable over most of adulthood and begins to increase in old age. In addition, the effects of age on happiness were investigated; the cross-sectional evidence speaks for a steady decrease in happiness across age groups, but within-person decline in happiness was only evident in old age. Together the findings provide further evidence for multidirectional age differences in affective experience and suggest that the overall quality of affective experience may deteriorate in old age.

Keywords: sadness; anger; happiness; aging; effect; emotion; adult life-span; longitudinal change (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/93010/1/Ku ... Change-Affective.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Stability and Change in Affective Experience across the Adult Life-Span: Analyses with a National Sample from Germany (2013)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:espost:93010

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters from ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().