Feelings intensify as we get older

May 26 2005

According to new study people tend to feel more strongly about an experience regardless of whether it was positive or negative, when they know it is ending, suggesting that deadlines intensify our emotions.

Study author Dr. Ursina Teuscher of the University of California, San Diego says the research showed that in general the emotions got more intense, for the positive as well as the negative,if people knew they had a deadline.

Teuscher observed that people appeared to place great importance on endings, which possibly causes them to invest more in experiences they know are ending, with the result that the outcome of those experiences becomes particularly important.That makes the sad or happy feelings they have from the ending much more intense.

Teuscher says her findings suggest that people's emotions may become heightened as they age,and that could explain why some people notice changes in older relatives. The knowledge that deadlines can intensify emotions might help these interactions.

For the study, Teuscher and her team asked 165 young people, average age 21, to read a series of scenarios, half of which included deadlines. Afterwards, people had to rate how intensely they would experience a set of 31 different emotions if they were in the scenario.

In one of a series of experiments, for instance, people reported stronger emotional reactions to having dinner at a colleague's home when they knew that the person was retiring next week.

Dr.Teuscher and her colleagues plan to present their findings this week to the American Psychological Society annual convention in Los Angeles.