Most people assume that emotional wisdom naturally improves with age. But new research suggests the story is more complicated. While the knowledge accumulated over a lifetime appears to help people regulate many different emotions, the mental abilities involved in quick thinking and flexible problem-solving may be especially important when trying to reduce feelings like sadness and disgust—and those particular emotional challenges may become harder with age.
Life often teaches people how to handle difficult moments. A painful disappointment that once felt overwhelming may become easier to put into perspective after years of experience. At the same time, aging also brings gradual changes in the brain’s cognitive abilities, raising an important question: when emotions run high, which matters more—the knowledge built through decades of living or the ability to think quickly and adapt in the moment?
A new study published in the journal Emotion tackles that question by examining two different kinds of cognitive abilities across adulthood and how each relates to emotion regulation.
The researchers found that these two forms of thinking appear to play different roles. Accumulated knowledge and experience—known as crystallized cognition—was linked to better emotion regulation regardless of the type of emotion involved. Meanwhile, fluid cognition, which supports mental flexibility, attention, memory, and rapid information processing, was specifically associated with successfully reducing negative emotions.
Two very different kinds of intelligence
Psychologists have long distinguished between two broad forms of cognitive ability.
Fluid cognition refers to the mental skills people use to solve new problems, shift attention, remember information, and make decisions quickly. These abilities generally decline gradually with age.
Crystallized cognition, in contrast, reflects the knowledge people accumulate throughout life through education, language, and experience. Unlike fluid cognition, it often remains stable or even improves well into later adulthood.
The researchers wanted to understand how these two cognitive resources contribute to one of everyday life’s most important psychological skills: regulating emotions.
Rather than asking participants to use one specific strategy such as cognitive reappraisal, the researchers allowed them to choose whatever approach they naturally preferred. This design was intended to better resemble how people manage emotions outside the laboratory.
Testing emotional reactions across adulthood
The study involved 286 adults between 25 and 85 years old from the St. Louis community.
Each participant completed the NIH Toolbox Cognitive Battery, a standardized series of tests measuring both fluid and crystallized cognitive abilities.
Participants then completed an emotion regulation experiment while being video recorded.
First, they watched film clips designed to naturally evoke one of four emotions:
- disgust
- sadness
- amusement
- contentment
During this initial viewing, they were instructed simply to watch the clips naturally.
Later, they watched a different set of film clips that evoked the same emotions, but this time they were asked to regulate their feelings.
For the negative clips, participants were instructed to try to feel less negative using any strategy they wished.
For the positive clips, they were asked to maintain or increase their positive feelings.
The researchers measured emotion regulation in two different ways.
Participants rated how strongly they experienced the target emotion after each clip. At the same time, facial expressions during the videos were analyzed using an AI-based emotion measurement system that automatically estimated expressions associated with the target emotions.
By comparing regulation trials with each person’s natural emotional reactions, the researchers could estimate how successfully participants regulated their emotions.
Life experience appeared to help across every kind of emotion
The clearest pattern emerged for crystallized cognition.
People who scored higher on measures of accumulated knowledge consistently showed greater success regulating emotions.
This relationship appeared across both negative and positive emotions and remained evident whether success was measured through participants’ own emotional reports or through their facial expressions.
Importantly, this advantage was not limited to one particular emotional situation. Whether participants were trying to reduce disgust, reduce sadness, maintain amusement, or sustain contentment, higher crystallized cognitive ability was associated with better overall regulation.
The findings also replicate results from the authors’ earlier research while extending them using a larger sample, additional emotional situations, and two independent measures of emotion regulation.
Quick thinking mattered most when emotions turned negative
Fluid cognition told a different story.
Overall, higher fluid cognitive ability was linked to better regulation of emotional experience only under certain conditions.
When researchers examined individual emotions, the association became much clearer.
Participants with stronger fluid cognitive abilities were better at reducing feelings of disgust and sadness.
However, fluid cognition was not similarly associated with increasing or maintaining positive emotions such as amusement and contentment.
The researchers suggest this difference may reflect the distinct mental demands of regulating negative emotions.
Reducing unpleasant emotions may require rapidly monitoring one’s emotional state, suppressing attention to emotionally powerful information, updating thoughts as circumstances change, and deciding when to switch strategies. These processes rely heavily on executive functions that form part of fluid cognition.
Maintaining pleasant emotions may often require fewer of these demanding mental operations.
Growing older did not make every type of emotion regulation easier
One widely held assumption is that emotional regulation naturally improves with age because older adults often report greater emotional well-being.
The findings paint a more nuanced picture.
When the researchers examined emotional experience, older age was associated with less success regulating disgust and sadness, even after accounting for differences in crystallized cognition.
In contrast, older adults did not show poorer ability to maintain or increase positive emotions such as amusement and contentment.
The pattern suggests that aging may present particular challenges when people cannot avoid intense negative situations and instead must actively regulate their emotional responses.
The authors note that this finding differs from some previous studies showing emotional advantages for older adults in daily life.
They suggest that everyday life gives people more opportunity to avoid distressing situations or choose environments that support emotional well-being. In a laboratory, however, participants cannot avoid emotionally unpleasant stimuli, potentially revealing regulatory challenges that remain hidden during normal daily activities.
More knowledge did not simply replace declining mental speed
The researchers also tested whether accumulated knowledge could compensate for age-related declines in fluid cognition.
Their analyses found no evidence that age changed how fluid or crystallized cognition influenced emotion regulation.
In other words, crystallized cognition appeared beneficial throughout adulthood rather than becoming uniquely important only in older age.
Likewise, fluid cognition remained valuable regardless of age, particularly when regulating negative emotions.
Why accumulated knowledge may matter
The study cannot determine exactly why crystallized cognition helps emotion regulation.
However, the authors outline several possibilities consistent with their findings.
People with greater accumulated knowledge may possess richer emotional vocabularies, allowing them to better recognize and distinguish what they are feeling.
They may also have developed a larger collection of emotion regulation strategies through years of experience and learned which approaches tend to work in different situations.
Rather than relying solely on faster thinking, they may draw upon well-practiced knowledge gained across a lifetime.
The study was not designed to determine whether people with higher crystallized cognition actually use more strategies or simply use familiar strategies more effectively, leaving that question for future research.
Questions that remain
The researchers caution that several limitations should be considered.
The study compared adults of different ages at one point in time rather than following the same individuals over many years, meaning it cannot show how emotion regulation changes within individuals as they age.
Only four emotions—disgust, sadness, amusement, and contentment—were examined, so the findings may not extend to every emotional experience.
The facial expression measurements were generated using an AI-based system. Although this provided objective and consistent scoring, facial expressions do not always perfectly reflect what people are actually feeling internally, and emotional expression and emotional experience are known to be only loosely connected.
Another important feature of the study is that participants chose their own regulation strategies. While this makes the task more similar to everyday life, it also means the researchers cannot determine whether crystallized cognition mainly helps people choose effective strategies, implement them successfully, or both.
A more complicated picture of emotional aging
The findings suggest that emotion regulation depends on more than simply getting older.
The mental abilities that allow people to think flexibly and respond quickly appear especially important when reducing negative emotions such as sadness and disgust. At the same time, the knowledge and experience accumulated across a lifetime may provide a broader advantage, supporting successful regulation across both positive and negative emotional situations.
Rather than showing that emotional control inevitably improves with age, the study suggests that different cognitive resources contribute in different ways. Life experience may provide an enduring foundation for managing emotions, while the cognitive abilities involved in rapid mental processing remain particularly important when confronting emotionally difficult situations that cannot simply be avoided.
