EXPLORING AGE, GENDER, AND RELATIONSHIP CLOSENESS DIFFERENCES IN RESPONSES TO IGNORED DISRESPECT

Abstract Emotional responses to disrespect tend to be negative (Hawkins, 2015). Little is known about how responses to disrespect vary across age groups and relationship closeness. It is unknown whether older adults have more emotional protection against disrespectful experiences, or are more deeply affected due to relationship closeness. Overall, we might expect that older adults react less negatively to disrespect compared to young adults, as they are more-skilled emotion regulators (Carstensen, 1991; English & Carstensen, 2014). We aimed to explore if, and under which circumstances, older adults are more or less sensitive to disrespect compared to younger adults. Three hundred participants responded to six scenarios illustrating ignored disrespect. Participants were randomly assigned to close or distant relationship disrespect scenarios. Relationship closeness was first determined by requesting participants identify a person in each layer of Kahn and Antonucci’s (1980) Social Convoy Model. Identified names were then automatically inserted into the six scenarios. Emotional responses and sensitivity to each scenario were recorded. Participants in the close condition reported more sensitivity to disrespect and negative emotions than participants in the distant condition. Females reported more sensitivity to disrespect and negative emotions than males. We did not find overwhelming support for age differences in responses to disrespect. A single scenario indicated younger participants more sensitive to disrespect than older participants. Findings suggest it is more hurtful to be disrespected by someone close to you and females may be more sensitive to disrespect than males. More research investigating the role of age in disrespect is needed.


LIFE REVIEW, REMINISCENCE, AND EMOTIONS EXPLORING AGE, GENDER, AND RELATIONSHIP CLOSENESS DIFFERENCES IN RESPONSES TO IGNORED DISRESPECT
Jenessa C. Steele, 1 Amanda Chappell, 1 and Rachel Scott 1 , 1.

Radford University, Radford, Virginia, United States
Emotional responses to disrespect tend to be negative (Hawkins, 2015). Little is known about how responses to disrespect vary across age groups and relationship closeness. It is unknown whether older adults have more emotional protection against disrespectful experiences, or are more deeply affected due to relationship closeness. Overall, we might expect that older adults react less negatively to disrespect compared to young adults, as they are more-skilled emotion regulators (Carstensen, 1991;English & Carstensen, 2014). We aimed to explore if, and under which circumstances, older adults are more or less sensitive to disrespect compared to younger adults. Three hundred participants responded to six scenarios illustrating ignored disrespect. Participants were randomly assigned to close or distant relationship disrespect scenarios. Relationship closeness was first determined by requesting participants identify a person in each layer of Kahn and Antonucci's (1980) Social Convoy Model. Identified names were then automatically inserted into the six scenarios. Emotional responses and sensitivity to each scenario were recorded. Participants in the close condition reported more sensitivity to disrespect and negative emotions than participants in the distant condition. Females reported more sensitivity to disrespect and negative emotions than males. We did not find overwhelming support for age differences in responses to disrespect. A single scenario indicated younger participants more sensitive to disrespect than older participants. Findings suggest it is more hurtful to be disrespected by someone close to you and females may be more sensitive to disrespect than males. More research investigating the role of age in disrespect is needed.

GENDER DIFFERENCES IN SOCIAL JUDGEMENTS RELATE TO SOCIAL EXPERIENCE ON THE JOB FOR OLDER ADULTS Cassandra Richards, 1 and Jennifer T. Stanley 1 , 1 The University of Akron, Akron, Ohio, United States
Older adults (OA) are worse than young adults (YA) at recognizing emotional facial expressions (Ruffman, Henry, Livingstone, & Phillips, 2008). In particular, age differences in anger recognition remain even when other emotions improve via additional context (e.g., Richter, Dietzel, & Kunzmann, 2011;Stanley & Isaacowitz, 2015). We investigated whether job experiences with greater social components would relate to better anger recognition and interpersonal perception in OA. We expected OA who held jobs with more social requirements would be better at anger recognition and interpersonal perception, but that this would differ by gender. OA (N=194) reported their present job and completed an emotion perception task and the Interpersonal Perception Task-15 (IPT-15;Costanzo & Archer, 1989). Ratings from the O*Net database were used to determine the degree of social requirements (0-100) for reported jobs. For older females, more social experience in their present job was related to better anger recognition (r =.45,p=.014). More face-to-face experience in the job held the longest was related to better overall emotion perception in older females (r=.20,p=.047). For older males, more social experience in their present job was related to worse anger recognition (r=-.45, p=.029). More coordination and leadership experience in the job held the longest was related to better interpersonal perception in older males (r =.28, p=.010). These results suggest gender is important when examining the degree to which social experience in the workplace relates to social judgments. Future work should investigate whether gender differences in subordinate vs leadership roles can account for these findings.

AGE MODERATES THE ASSOCIATION BETWEEN IMPLICIT AND EXPLICIT NEGATIVE EMOTIONAL REACTIVITY
Mai B. Mikkelsen, 1 Gitte Tramm, 1 and Mimi Mehlsen 1 ,

Department of Psychology and Behavioural Sciences, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark
Background: According to the notion of maturational dualism, the link between mind and body weakens with Innovation in Aging, 2019, Vol. 3, No. S1