Title: THE INFLUENCE OF AGE ON EXPERIENCING SELF-CONSCIOUS EMOTIONS IN DAILY LIFE
Abstract: By using data from 1996 General Social Survey (GSS), we explored the relationships between age and people’s experience of self-conscious emotions. 1447 participants (aged 18 to 89 years) reported the number of days in which they had experienced shame, embarrassment, and pride in last 7 days. Correlation analysis showed that participants’ self-reported happiness positively correlated with the frequencies of pride experiences (r = .118, p < .001), while negatively correlated with the frequencies of both shame (r = -.081, p < .01) and embarrassment experiences (r = -.075, p < .01). Hierarchical regression results showed that older adults tended to experience less embarrassment (β = -0.062, p = .026) and pride (β = -0.058, p = .033) in daily life. In addition, males had higher frequencies of pride experiences (β = 0.084, p = .002) than females. The results implies that older adults may be skillful at avoiding not just negative emotions and also positive emotions such as pride that may hinder their interpersonal relationships.