Gender Differences in Daily Emotional Reactivity in Late Life

Research has shown varying results for gender differences in emotional reactivity. While some studies have found that women have greater negative affect than men, others have found no difference. Likewise, other studies have also found contradicting results for positive affect. Furthermore, as people age, affect variability towards both positive and negative stimuli diminish for both men and women. This suggests that gender differences in reactivity may be different in older populations than younger populations. Using data from the Daily Experience and Wellbeing Study (DEWS) involving 313 older adults aged 65 and older, the present study examines the gender differences in the association between positive or negative encounters and the mood these encounters may elicit in older adults. Participants first provided their background information and identified their social partners using the social convoy measure. Then, they completed Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) surveys every 3 hours throughout the day, reporting their social encounters and evaluating the pleasantness and any stressful discussion during each of these encounters and rating their mood. Through multilevel models, this study found that for older adults, men have a more significant improvement in mood after positive encounters than women. This contradicts our hypothesis that there would be no gender difference in reactivity after positive encounters. In addition, the multilevel models showed that for older adults, there is no significant gender difference in change of mood after negative encounters despite previous research that has shown that women have greater variability in negative affect than men.