Can’t get it out of my head: Age differences in affective responsiveness vary with preoccupation and elapsed time after daily hassles.

To better understand age differences in negative affective responses to daily hassles, the current study investigated how responses may depend on how much time has elapsed after the hassle and how much one still thinks about the hassle. In an experience-sampling approach with mobile phones, 397 participants aged 12 to 88 years reported their momentary activating (e.g., angry) and deactivating (e.g., disappointed) negative affect and occurrences of hassles, on average 55 times over 3 weeks. On measurement occasions when a hassle had occurred, participants also reported how long ago it occurred and how much they were currently preoccupied with thoughts about the hassle. Multilevel modeling results showed that, compared with more recent hassles, people across the entire age-range of the sample reported lower activating, yet higher deactivating, negative affect when hassles occurred a longer time ago. Age differences only emerged in situations when individuals were still preoccupied with a past hassle. In these situations, deactivating negative affect was higher with stronger preoccupation and more elapsed time after the hassles; these effects were more pronounced with older age. Activating negative affect was higher the more people reported being preoccupied with the hassle and this effect was also more pronounced with age. The results foster an understanding of age differences in negative affective responses to daily hassles by considering preoccupation with hassles and investigating activating and deactivating negative affect separately. We discuss under which circumstances affective responsiveness and age differences therein are more or less pronounced. (PsycINFO Database Record