Life satisfaction and emotional regulation in aging : temporal perspective and effect of gender

International audience ; Paradoxically, older people report higher levels of life satisfaction than adults under 65 (Urry & Gross, 2010). For some authors, this finding can be explained by the emotional regulation strategies adopted by seniors. Gross and John (2003) postulate that it is the greater use of cognitive reappraisal (though more cognitively costly) and the lesser recourse to expressive suppression that enable access to greater life satisfaction. At the same time, motivational theory postulates that an increasingly narrow temporal perspective would induce the use of more efficient strategies (Carstensen et al., 1999). However, the roles of gender and perception of future time remain to be clarified.