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Innov Aging
Innov Aging
innovateage
Innovation in Aging
2399-5300 Oxford University Press US 

10.1093/geroni/igaa057.2138
igaa057.2138
Abstracts
Session 5780 (Symposium)
AcademicSubjects/SOC02600
A Tale of Two Emotions: The Diverging Salience and Health Consequences of Calmness and Excitement in Old Age
Hamm Jeremy 1 Wrosch Carsten 2 Barlow Meaghan 3 Kunzmann Ute 4 1 
North Dakota State University, Fargo, North Dakota, United States
2 
Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
3 
University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, California, United States
4 
University of Leipzig, Leipzig, Sachsen, Germany
2020 
16 12 2020 
16 12 2020 
4 Suppl 1 Program Abstracts from The GSA 2020 Annual Scientific Meeting “Turning 75: Why Age Matters”626 627
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America.2020This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Abstract
Using two studies, we examined the late life prevalence and health consequences of discrete positive emotions posited to motivate rest and recovery (calmness) or pursuit of novelty and stimulation (excitement). Study 1 assessed the salience of these discrete emotions in older adults (n=73, Mage=73) relative to younger adults (n=73, Mage=23) over a one-week period. Multilevel models showed that older (vs. younger) adults reported higher calmness and lower excitement. Study 2 examined the longitudinal health consequences of calmness and excitement in old age (n=336, Mage=75), as moderated by perceived control. Multilevel growth models showed that calmness, but not excitement, buffered against 10-year declines in psychological well-being (perceived stress, depressive symptoms) and physical health (physical symptoms, chronic conditions) for older adults with low perceived control. Results suggest that positive emotions with disparate motivational functions become more (calmness) or less (excitement) salient and have diverging implications for health in old age.