Effective regulation of the experience and expression of negative affect in old age.

We investigated age differences in the experience and expression of emotion in 64 younger and 62 older adults. By manipulating emotion-regulation instructions, we investigated the effects of age on the control of both the inner experience and the outward expression of emotion. We predicted that there would be age improvements in regulating the inner experience of emotion.

A new conceptualization of alexithymia in the general adult population: implications for research involving older adults.

Objective: The purpose of this study is to test the validity of existing conceptualizations of the alexithymia concept, with particular reference to aging.

Methods: Two hundred and forty-eight healthy adults completed measures of alexithymia and psychosocial functioning; younger and older adults (n=121) also completed a measure of emotional responsiveness.

Results: Older adults engaged in less introspective thought traditionally thought to denote increased alexithymia.

Remembering or knowing others? Person recognition and recollective experience.

Using Tulving's (1985) remember/know procedure, the present research investigated the experiential concomitants of person recognition. Noting basic differences in the manner in which the mind processes expectancy-related material, it was anticipated that facial typicality would be a critical determinant of people's recollective experiences (i.e.

Self-esteem and memory.

This article describes two potential bases for memory bias associated with global self-esteem. According to the mood-congruence model, activation of either dimension of self-esteem (self-competence or self-liking) produces an affective state that facilitates retrieval of traces that are consistent with that state while hindering retrieval of traces that are inconsistent. According to the relevance model, activation of either dimension results in superior encoding of matching negative content by individuals who are low on the dimension.

Person perception across the menstrual cycle: hormonal influences on social-cognitive functioning.

Women's reactions to men shift during the menstrual cycle. For example, during the phase of high conception risk, women prefer men with masculinized facial features. A favored explanation for this effect is that women display an enhanced sensitivity to stimuli that have significant reproductive relevance during the phase of the menstrual cycle in which conception risk is high.

Directed remembering: subliminal cues alter nonconscious memory strategies.

Much research on memory function has focused on changes in recognition performance brought about by differences in the processes engaged during encoding. In most of this work, participants either receive explicit instructions to remember particular items or they perform orienting (i.e.

Are you looking at me? Eye gaze and person perception.

Previous research has highlighted the pivotal role played by gaze detection and interpretation in the development of social cognition. Extending work of this kind, the present research investigated the effects of eye gaze on basic aspects of the person-perception process, namely, person construal and the extraction of category-related knowledge from semantic memory. It was anticipated that gaze direction would moderate the efficiency of the mental operations through which these social-cognitive products are generated.

Decomposing global self-esteem.

We argue in this paper for distinguishing two dimensions of global self-esteem, self-competence and self-liking. Studies 1 and 2 identify a corresponding pair of factors in Rosenberg's (1965) Self-Esteem Scale. Studies 3 and 4 examine the predictive value of the two-dimensional approach to self-esteem as reflected in the unique associations of self-competence and self-liking with negative life events and word recognition.

Creating memory illusions: expectancy-based processing and the generation of false memories.

The present research investigated the generation of memory illusions. In particular, it attempted to delineate the conditions under which category-based thinking prompts the elicitation of false memories. Noting fundamental differences in the manner in which expected and unexpected person-related information is processed and represented in the mind, it was anticipated that, via gist-based recognition, participants would display a pronounced propensity to generate expectancy-consistent false memories.