Does brain power help people manage their emotions?
People with higher fluid cognitive abilities are better at both increasing and decreasing their emotional responses to sad situations.
Source
Fluid cognitive ability is a resource for successful emotion regulation in older and younger adults
Study at a glance
- Design
- Human experiment — Younger vs older adults instructed in emotion-regulation strategies; fluid ability as a resource
- N
- N=60 · 30 younger (18–22) and 30 older (55–71) adults
- Population
- Community-recruited younger and older adults
- Outcome
- Success implementing instructed emotion regulation as a function of fluid cognitive ability and age
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Inspect source passages
Does brain power help people manage their emotions?
These passages occur verbatim in the stored paper text. They support the points listed below; they do not verify every statement in the explanation.
30 younger and 30 older adults participated in the study.
Thirty younger (20 female, 18–22 years, M = 19.5, SD = 1.18) and 30 older (17 female, 55–71 years, M = 61.9, SD = 5.14) adults were recruited via internet (e.g., http://www.craigslist.com ), local newspaper, and community e-mailing list advertisements.
120 digital color pictures were used in the cognitive reappraisal task.
In the CR task, which is described below, participants viewed a set of 120 digital color pictures (800 × 600 pixels).
What they did
Researchers tested 30 younger adults and 30 older adults on standardized cognitive tests to measure working memory, processing speed, and perceptual reasoning. Participants then completed an emotion regulation task using 120 sad pictures, where they were instructed to either increase, decrease, or simply view their emotional reaction. The study tracked participants' reactions using self-reported ratings, facial muscle activity, heart rate, and skin conductance.
What they found
Individuals with stronger fluid cognitive skills were significantly more successful at both up-regulating and down-regulating their emotional responses. Although older adults had lower average fluid cognitive scores, age itself did not independently predict how well participants regulated their emotions. Interestingly, having ever been married was also associated with better emotion regulation performance.
The limits
What it doesn't show
The correlational design of this study means it cannot prove that higher cognitive ability causes better emotion regulation. It focused exclusively on sadness, so these findings may not apply to other emotions like anger, fear, or joy. Additionally, the small sample size and the demographic lack of diversity limit how well these results generalize to broader populations.
Key terms
- Fluid cognitive ability
- The capacity to think logically, solve novel problems, and process information quickly independent of acquired knowledge.
- Cognitive reappraisal
- An emotion regulation strategy that involves changing how one thinks about a situation to alter its emotional impact.
- Crystallized cognitive ability
- The accumulation of knowledge, vocabulary, and skills acquired through education and experience.
- Corrugator electromyography
- A physiological measure of facial muscle activity above the eyebrow, typically associated with frowning and negative emotions.
- Electrodermal activity
- A physiological measure of sweat gland activity on the skin, indicating sympathetic nervous system arousal.
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Common questions
Does aging make it harder to control our emotions?
While older adults in the study scored lower on tests of fluid cognitive ability, they did not perform significantly worse at regulating their emotions than younger adults in this specific low-demand task.
Is it easier to turn down an emotion than it is to turn it up?
The study found that fluid cognitive ability is equally important for both increasing and decreasing sad emotional responses.
What specific cognitive tests were used?
The researchers used subtests from the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale IV, measuring digit span, vocabulary, block design, and coding speed.
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