Older adults prioritize emotional well-being in their relationships, but communication of emotion may differ during in-person and phone contact. Older adults (N = 266, aged 65-90) completed ecological momentary assessments (EMA; n = 4,627) reporting their social encounters via different modes of social contact and positive and negative mood every 3 hours. Participants wore a device with the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR) app which recorded 30 seconds every 7 minutes (n = 104,746 sound files). Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) extracted linguistic features reflecting verbal communication of emotion from the sound file transcriptions. Multilevel models revealed that in-person and phone contact were associated with communicating more positive emotions, and in-person contact was associated with communicating more negative emotions. There was no statistically significant evidence that the association between communicating positive emotions and more positive and less negative mood varied by form of communication. Participants who had less in-person contact on average experienced a greater increase in positive mood when they communicated positive emotions. This study emphasizes the emotional benefits of social contact, particularly for communicating positive feelings. Findings highlight the role of in-person contact in older adults' daily lives, allowing for the verbal communication of negative emotions.
Karen L. Fingerman (Mon,) studied this question.