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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2026 Apr 8.
Published before final editing as: Emotion. 2026 Apr 6:10.1037/emo0001675. doi: 10.1037/emo0001675

Fluid and Crystallized Cognitive Abilities Differentially Predict Successful Regulation of Positive versus Negative Emotion

Claire M Growney 1, David A Balota 2, Tammy English 2
PMCID: PMC13055792  NIHMSID: NIHMS2152773  PMID: 41941154

Abstract

Emotion regulation (ER) is thought to rely on cognitive resources, with prior work identifying positive associations between both fluid and crystallized cognitive ability and successful ER. While emotional well-being tends to improve with age throughout adulthood, it is less clear whether ER improves, particularly in contexts involving unavoidable negative stimuli. In the present study, age-diverse community participants (N = 286, age 25–85) completed the NIH Toolbox Cognitive Battery to assess their fluid and crystallized cognitive ability. They completed an ER task involving prohedonic regulation with instructions to regulate using any strategy while viewing film clips eliciting target emotions varying by valence and arousal: disgust, sadness, amusement, and contentment. ER success was assessed both through self-reports of experience of the target emotion and automated coding of facial expression of the target emotion. We examined associations among age, cognitive performance, and ER success. Individuals who scored higher on crystallized cognition showed greater ER success regardless of emotion type, and this effect was robust across both success indices (emotional experience and expression). Age was associated with reduced ability to decrease negative emotional experience, while fluid cognition was associated with heightened ability to decrease negative emotional experience. Both age and fluid cognition were unassociated with the ability to increase positive emotional experience. Findings suggest that older individuals and those with limited fluid cognitive resources may experience ER difficulties specifically when encountering negative situations. Findings also provide additional evidence supporting the potential role of crystallized cognitive ability or life experience in successfully regulating emotions.

Keywords: Emotion regulation, Emotion expression, Crystallized cognition, Fluid cognition

Introduction

Emotion regulation (ER), the processes involved in modulating one’s experience and expression of emotion (Gross, 1998, 2015) is important for well-being. The ability to successfully regulate emotion is theorized to rely on different types of resources which may change with age (Opitz et al., 2012; Urry & Gross, 2010). Fluid cognitive ability, defined as aspects of cognition which involve accessing, processing, and manipulating information, and crystallized cognitive ability, defined as acquired knowledge (Horn & Cattell, 1967; Mungas et al., 2014), are two aspects of cognition theorized to contribute to successful ER (Isaacowitz & Blanchard-Fields, 2012). These abilities have different associations with age, with fluid cognitive ability tending to decline with age (Salthouse, 2004; 2009), while crystallized cognitive ability is generally maintained or improved with age (McArdle et al., 2002). Recent work using a relatively small sample of age-diverse participants identified differential positive associations between ER success and fluid versus crystallized cognitive abilities (Growney & English, 2023). Specifically, tests of fluid cognitive ability were associated with successful regulation of sadness as indexed by emotional experience, whereas crystallized cognitive ability was associated with successful regulation of emotional experience with all emotions considered in the study (disgust, sadness, and amusement). In the present study, we aim to replicate and extend this prior work in a larger sample, where we examine effects associated with both age and cognition on ER success as indexed by emotional experience and behavioral expression when regulating negative (disgust and sadness) and positive emotion (amusement and contentment).

Cognition and Emotion Regulation

Fluid cognitive ability is thought to rely heavily on factors that allow for quick and efficient processing of information (McArdle et al., 2002) and encompasses executive functioning skills (Miyake et al., 2000) such as updating and monitoring, set shifting, and inhibiting prepotent responses, as well as processing speed and memory skills. Prior work has theorized about how these skills are relevant throughout the ER process (Pruessner et al., 2020). For example, according to the process model of ER (Gross, 1998; 2015), individuals must monitor their emotions and environment to understand how to best adjust ER efforts. ER can involve inhibiting attention toward aspects of one’s environment that are inconsistent with emotional goals and knowing when to persist with implementing an ER strategy or switch to a different one. Finally, because ER is theorized to be easier when initiated earlier in the emotion generative process (Gross, 2001; Sheppes & Gross, 2011), the ability to quickly assess and respond to ER need may be important for ER success.

Empirical work supports this theoretical reasoning. A recent meta-analysis of studies examining ER success when instructed to use reappraisal, an emotion regulation strategy in which one reframes information to change its emotional meaning (Gross, 2014), indicated that performance on executive functioning tests was associated with more successful downregulation of negative emotions (Toh et al., 2024). Other work has examined aspects of fluid cognitive ability beyond executive functioning skills, identifying similar associations. For example, Opitz et al. (2014) used a fluid cognitive ability composite score including processing speed, working memory, and perceptual reasoning, and found this composite to predict successful use of reappraisal among young and middle-aged–older adults presented with sad images. Using the fluid cognitive ability composite from the NIH Toolbox Cognitive Battery in a sample of adults aged 25–83, Growney and English (2023) similarly found the association between this fluid composite and ER success to be stronger when regulating emotions using a participant-selected strategy with sadness-eliciting videos than with amusement-eliciting videos.

Crystallized cognitive ability is thought to reflect accumulated life experience (Horn & Cattell, 1967), with tests of crystallized areas such as verbal ability being strongly associated with knowledge in a variety of domains (Ackerman, 1996), as well as educational attainment (Kaufman et al., 2009). Crystallized cognitive ability, in turn, is theorized to be important in various socioemotional contexts involving ER (Blanchard-Fields, 2007). For example, individuals may draw on knowledge gained through past experiences when deciding which ER strategy to use and how to implement the strategy in that context. Verbal ability may also contribute to emotion granularity, the ability to make fine-grained distinctions between emotional states, which is theorized to be a resource for effective ER (Smidt & Suvak, 2015), as well as the ability to generate effective appraisals of a situation (Weber et al., 2014). Furthermore, areas of the brain activated during ER processes also play important roles in speech and language processing, suggesting these domains may rely on shared neural networks (Hertrich et al., 2021; Kohn et al., 2014). Thus, ability to access crystallized knowledge and ability to regulate emotion may be closely intertwined.

Investigations of the associations between crystallized abilities and ER processes have yielded mixed findings. Studies instructing participants to regulate emotions using reappraisal (e.g., reframe the meaning of emotional images) have failed to find associations between vocabulary test performance and successful downregulation of negative emotions, both in a sample of young and middle-older adults reappraising sad images (Opitz et al., 2014) and a study of young adults reappraising high-arousal negative images (McRae et al., 2012). On the other hand, verbal fluency, a skill which relies both on executive functions and knowledge, positively predicted ER success with high-arousal negative stimuli, as indexed by enhanced or suppressed expression of negative emotion in studies of older adults with and without cognitive impairment (Gyurak et al., 2009; 2012). Similarly, in a study of older adults aged 64–83, participants performed better on a verbal fluency test after watching a sadness-eliciting video clip under instructions to downregulate negative emotions, compared to watching the sadness-eliciting video clip without regulating emotions (Rompilla et al., 2025). Other work has examined these associations using ER assessments not specific to any strategy and measures of cognition more centrally focused on crystallized cognitive ability. Ability to manage emotions as assessed through emotional intelligence tests has been consistently associated with higher performance on crystallized cognitive ability tests (vocabulary and esoteric analogies; Farrelly & Austin, 2007; MacCann & Roberts, 2008; MacCann et al., 2011), although the existing work is largely based on age-homogonous samples with similar educational backgrounds (i.e., college students or relatively young white collar workers). In a study of adults aged 25–83 who were instructed to regulate their emotion during film clips eliciting disgust, sadness, or amusement, crystallized cognitive ability as measured by the NIH Toolbox Cognitive Battery predicted better ER success across all stimuli types, as indexed by self-reported emotional experience (Growney & English, 2023), but associated with performance on tests of fluid cognitive ability only with sadness-inducing stimuli.

Age and Emotion Regulation

Alongside age-related decreases in fluid cognitive ability and maintenance or increases in crystallized cognitive ability (Horn & Cattell, 1967; McArdle et al., 2002; Salthouse, 2004; 2009), older adults tend to experience greater emotional well-being compared with their younger counterparts (Burr et al., 2021; Carstensen et al., 2011; Growney et al., 2025a; Steptoe et al., 2015; Stone et al., 2010). These age-related advantages persist until near the end of life when individuals experience a terminal decline (Gerstorf et al. 2008a, 2008b). Several theoretical perspectives have been put forth to explain this pattern. Socioemotional selectivity theory (Carstensen, 2006; 2021) describes how changes in time perspective lead older adults to prioritize emotional well-being over other goals. Older adults therefore may put more effort into regulating emotions to meet emotional goals. The selection, optimization, and compensation with emotion regulation model (SOC-ER; Opitz et al., 2012; Urry & Gross, 2010) suggests that individuals select ER strategies consistent with their available resources (e.g., fluid cognitive ability, life experience) to successfully regulate emotions and maintain well-being. For example, older adults may rely more on their relatively high crystallized resources when engaging in ER. Strategies which individuals have previously used become part of their knowledge base. The breadth of one’s knowledge base and one’s ability to access information from this base are reflected in tests of crystallized cognitive ability. As knowledge bases regarding ER strategies grow with age and life experience, one possibility is that older adults disproportionately draw on crystallized cognition when regulating emotions.

Despite older adults’ relatively high emotional well-being, there is little evidence suggesting that older adults are better at regulating their emotions (Isaacowitz, 2022). A meta-analysis of laboratory ER tasks with age-diverse participants found minimal age-related differences in ER success (Brady et al., 2018). Notably, prior work has typically used ER tasks with instructions to regulate by implementing a particular ER strategy, lessening the impact of age-related experience that may be useful for knowing which ER strategy to select. The focus of existing research has also primarily been on dampening negative emotion. However, recent theorizing suggests an adaptive positive tactic (APT) shift with age, wherein older adults regulate emotions more by engaging with positive information than engaging or disengaging with negative information, with such positive approaches being effective regulation tactics (Isaacowitz et al., 2025). Indeed, recent work on savoring suggests that increasing positive emotions may be one way through which older adults maintain emotional well-being (Carstensen et al., 2024; Growney, Carstensen, & English, 2025). We reasoned that in situations where older adults could select their own ER strategies to implement and in situations not restricted to handling negative emotions, older adults’ accumulated life experience selecting and implementing strategies may benefit their ER success.

Given the aforementioned importance of cognitive abilities for successful ER, another possibility is that associations between age and successful ER vary by cognitive ability. Specifically, older adults who have better cognitive functioning may show heightened ER success relative to older adults with more limited cognitive resources. Age-related advantages in ER may not be present among older adults with limited cognitive resources. According to the cybernetic control perspective on ER (Tamir, 2020), regulation efforts are determined by a cost-benefit analysis incorporating the regulator’s perceived benefits associated with achieving emotional goals, as well as associated costs such as those related to cognitive demand. Thus, older adults with less cognitive resources may put less effort into ER, resulting in less success. In addition, those with more cognitive resources on which to draw may be motivated and able to put more effort into implementing strategies or have access to a wider range of strategies from which to select, contributing to greater success. Consistent with this idea, age-related advantages in emotional well-being are reduced in individuals with mild cognitive impairment (through trait-level reports: Growney & English, 2025a; in daily life: Growney et al., 2025b), suggesting cognitive ability may be an important resource for well-being maintenance in older adulthood.

The Present Study

ER is central to emotional well-being across adulthood, yet the mechanisms that support successful regulation in later life remain unclear. Although prior work has documented age-related advantages in ER success, particularly in daily life, far less is known about the cognitive processes that may support these advantages, or about the conditions under which they may break down. Understanding how cognitive abilities and age shape ER success is critical for clarifying when age-related strengths and vulnerabilities in ER are likely to emerge.

In the present study, we examine how age and cognitive test performance are associated with ER success as assessed both through self-reported emotional experience and behavioral coding of emotion expression in an adult lifespan sample. We extend Growney and English’s (2023) investigation by (a) including an expression-based index of ER success to examine effects using two modalities, (b) utilizing a stimulus set fully crossed regarding valence and arousal level to test effects across emotion type, and (c) including a larger sample of participants with sufficient power to test statistical interactions between cognitive ability and age. By characterizing associations among age, cognitive abilities, and ER success across multiple emotions and outcome measures, this study provides a more precise account of when age-related differences in ER are evident and how cognitive functioning relates to regulatory success across adulthood, thereby helping to constrain interpretations of age-related (dis)advantages in ER and identify the conditions under which such (dis)advantages are likely to be observed.

Participants completed a cognitive battery and an ER task involving film stimuli eliciting disgust, sadness, amusement, and contentment under instructions to regulate using any strategy. We consider two types of prohedonic ER: downregulating negative emotions and upregulating or maintaining positive emotions, with both being important for well-being but the latter being less investigated. Because ER is theorized to be more difficult with negative or high-arousal emotions (Charles, 2010; Growney & English, 2025b), we explored whether effects of age and cognitive ability vary by the emotion being regulated. Although we did not preregister hypotheses regarding how age and cognition may differentially predict ER success under different emotional contexts, we reasoned that older adults may be better able to maintain or increase positive emotion relative to decreasing negative emotion given their tendency to focus on positive information (Isaacowitz et al., 2025), and fluid cognitive ability may be more strongly linked to heightened success for negative (versus positive) emotions given the greater regulation demands associated with negative emotions (Tsujimoto et al., 2024). Based on prior work uncovering associations between crystallized cognitive ability and ER success across three emotion types (Growney & English, 2023), we expected similar associations to emerge across the four emotion types examined in the present study.

Our operationalization of emotion regulation success included experience and expression of emotion. Although these indices are only loosely coupled (Gross et al., 2000), both are useful indicators of emotion and have been used in prior work as indicators of ER success. Preregistered hypotheses were as follows:

H1) Age is positively associated with ER success (as indicated by less experience or expression of the target emotion when instructed to downregulate negative emotions or more experience or expression of the target emotion when instructed to upregulate positive emotions).

H2) Fluid and crystalized cognitive ability are positively associated with ER success.

H3) Cognitive ability moderates the relationship between age and ER success, such that there is a less positive association between age and ER success among those with lower cognitive ability.

Methods

Transparency and Openness

We report how we determined our sample size, and we describe all data manipulations and measures that were collected, as described in our preregistration. Data were analyzed using R, version 4.3.0 (R Core Team, 2023). Models were estimated using the lme4 package (Bates et al., 2015). This study’s hypotheses and analyses were preregistered on OSF (Growney et al., 2021). R code and output are available on OSF (Growney et al., 2025). Researchers may contact the last author to request access to the data. Data cannot be made publicly available due to institutional restrictions.

Participants

Participants were 286 individuals from the St. Louis, Missouri community, aged 25–85 (M = 54.36, SD = 17.17) recruited with approximately equal number of individuals in each 10-year age bin, stratified by gender and socioeconomic status. The sample was 62.0% women, 37.3% men, and 0.7% other gender. Regarding race and ethnicity, the sample was 2.4% Hispanic/Latino, 23.3% African American/Black, 3.1% American Indian/Alaska Native, 2.8% Asian/Asian American/Pacific Islander, 73.5% White/European American, and 1.4% checked a box indicating they identified as a race or ethnicity which was not included on the checklist. To be eligible to participate, participants were required to be able to read and speak English as well as score below 2 on the self-report Ascertain Dementia 8-item questionnaire (AD8; adapted from Galvin et al., 2005), a screener for cognitive impairment, with scores of 2 or higher indicating potential cognitive impairment. Data collection took place from 2018 to 2021.

The sample size was determined by a power analysis conducted for a larger project using a different part of the present study’s dataset. For the present study, we conducted a power analysis using G*Power 3.1 (Faul et al., 2007) to estimate the required sample size for detecting a small effect (f2 = 0.05) in a multiple regression with four predictors (age, cognitive ability, age X cognitive ability, and emotional reactivity), with α = .05 and power = .80. The analysis indicated that a sample size of 244 participants is required. Although our primary analysis uses a multilevel model to account for 4 repeated trials per participant, this fixed-effects regression estimate serves as a conservative guideline, as multilevel models offer greater power due to the inclusion of within-person variance.

Procedure

Before coming to the lab, participants completed questionnaires about constructs unrelated to the present study, as well as demographics. Participants completed these questionnaires about a week prior to their first laboratory session. Please see supplemental materials for a full list of questionnaires. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, those who participated before versus after April 2020 completed procedures in a slightly different order to comply with university health and safety guidelines. Those who participated before April 2020 completed the NIH Toolbox Cognitive Battery during their first laboratory visit, and an ER task during their second laboratory visit. Those who participated after April 2020 completed both tasks in one laboratory visit.1 All materials and procedures were approved by the Institutional Review Board at Washington University in St. Louis.

Measures

Fluid and Crystallized Cognitive Ability

Participants completed the NIH Toolbox Cognitive Battery (Mungas et al., 2014), which includes the following tests: pattern comparison (processing speed), dimensional change card sort (cognitive flexibility), flanker inhibitory control and attention, picture sequence memory (episodic memory), list sort working memory, oral reading recognition, and picture vocabulary. The first five tests comprise the fluid cognitive ability composite (Cronbach’s α = .75), and the last two tests comprise the crystallized cognitive ability composite (Cronbach’s α = .78). As preregistered, we examined the standard scores, uncorrected for age, which compare the participant’s performance with the general U.S. population mean (normative mean = 100, SD = 15), with higher scores indicating better cognitive performance. Additional information about these tests is available in Table S1.

Emotion Regulation Task

Participants completed the ER task alone on a computer in the laboratory while being video recorded. At baseline, participants viewed a neutral video of abstract lines. The two subsequent blocks comprised four different video clips each, with clips not repeated throughout the task, for a total of eight unique clips. Clips were counterbalanced across blocks, but always included one clip eliciting each of four emotions. Clips were presented in a random order within block. The first block assessed emotional reactivity, and the second block assessed ER, with the reactivity block always preceding the regulation block. In the reactivity block, participants viewed four clips, each eliciting disgust, sadness, amusement, or contentment, under instructions to respond naturally without changing how they feel. In the regulation block, participants viewed four different clips, each eliciting disgust, sadness, amusement, or contentment, under instructions to regulate emotions pro-hedonically. All clips were validated to elicit the target emotion in age-diverse samples (see Table S2 for details).

In the regulation block, instructions for regulating emotions with the disgust and sadness clips were: “Please watch the next film clip carefully. This time, as you watch the clip please try to manage your emotions so that you feel less negative. Use any strategy you have available to get rid of your negative feelings.” Instructions for regulation emotions with the amusement and contentment clips were: “Please watch the next film clip carefully. This time, as you watch the clip please try to manage your emotions so that you feel more positive. Use any strategy you have available to keep your positive feelings going.” In both the reactivity and regulation blocks, participants rated their emotional experience after watching the clip, then completed a word formation task designed to neutralize emotions (adapted from Joorman et al., 2007) before viewing the next clip.

Emotion Regulation Success – Experience of Target Emotion.

After each clip, participants rated their experience of a series of emotions on a scale of 1 = Not at all to 7 = Extremely. As preregistered, we focus on the target emotion elicited by each film clip: disgusted, sad, amused, and relaxed. “Relaxed” was chosen as the target emotion for participants to rate rather than “content,” due to the potential ambiguity of the word “content,” which can refer to a low-arousal positive state or to the subject matter of something. Ratings for negative films (i.e., disgust and sadness) were reverse scored so that higher values indicate more successful ER (i.e., more experience of amusement and relaxation; less experience of disgust and sadness).

Emotion Regulation Success – Expression of Target Emotion.

To code the videos of participants’ facial expressions while watching each film clip, we used Hume AI’s expression measurement platform (Hume AI, 2025), which provides automated coding based on a multimodal emotion inference model. The model was created and validated using age-diverse and ethnically diverse faces (Cowen et al., 2024) and produces values for a series of emotions ranging from 0 (indicating that the emotion is not present) to 1 (indicating a high degree of confidence that the emotion is strongly expressed). We focus on ratings of the target emotions elicited by each film clip: disgust, sadness, amusement, and contentment. As with emotion experience, we reverse scored ratings for disgust and sadness so that higher values consistently indicated more successful ER (i.e., more expression of amusement and contentment; less expression of disgust and sadness).2

Analytic Plan

Analyses were preregistered on OSF. We used multilevel modeling to account for the nested data (i.e., within-subjects repeated trials design). Experience and expression were used as outcome indicators of ER success. We examined age in combination with either fluid or crystallized cognitive ability in separate models, as preregistered, to reduce multicollinearity and maintain interpretability. First, we conducted models examining main effects of age and cognition (either fluid or crystalized) predicting ER success (Model 1). Then, to examine whether effects of age vary by cognition, we added interactions between age and cognition (Model 2). We controlled for dummy-coded clip type in all models, with the contentment clip as the reference category.

To account for variance in naturally occurring emotional responses and isolate emotion that is more likely attributable to emotion regulation attempts, we controlled for emotional reactivity (i.e., experience or expression of the target emotion on reactivity trials, coded in directions consistent with the dependent variables). For example, we control for experience of disgust (reverse-scored) when viewing the disgust clip under instructions to watch naturally when the dependent variable is experience of disgust (reverse-scored) when viewing the disgust clip under instructions to regulate emotions. We control for experience of the target emotion on reactivity trials in models predicting ER success as indexed by emotional experience, and we control for expression of the target emotion on reactivity trials in models predicting ER success as indexed by emotional expression. All models include random intercepts and slopes for reactivity.

To evaluate whether the primary age and cognitive ability effects observed across clips were robust to differences in emotional content or varied by emotion type, as found in prior work (Growney & English, 2023), we conducted additional analyses treating film clip type as a contextual factor. Specifically, in a final set of exploratory models, we examined film clip type as a moderator of age, fluid cognitive ability, and crystallized cognitive ability.

Results

Preliminary Analyses

Descriptive statistics and correlations among study variables are presented in Table 1. Consistent with patterns typically observed in the aging literature, age was negatively associated with fluid cognitive ability (r = −.57, p < .001) and positively correlated with crystallized cognitive ability (r = .21, p < .001). Age was not correlated with ER success (correlation with emotion experience indicator of success: r = −.10, p = .107; correlation with expression indicator of success: r = −.12, p = .069). ER success as measured by the experience of the target emotion had a weak, non-significant positive association with ER success as measured by the expression of the target emotion (r = .11, p = .095).

Table 1.

Descriptive Statistics and Correlations Among Study Variables

M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6
1. Age 54.36 17.17 -
2. Fluid Cognitive Ability 99.72 12.55 −.57*** -
3. Crystallized Cognitive Ability 111.86 9.53 .21*** .28*** -
4. ER Success: Experience 4.33 0.99 −.10 .09 .08 -
5. Reactivity: Experience 4.07 0.90 .04 −.09 −.04 .36*** -
6. ER success: Expression 0.53 0.08 −.12 .11 .07 .11 .06 -
7. Reactivity: Expression 0.51 0.07 −.08 .08 .16* .03 −.04 .38***
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Note. Between-person correlations are presented. ER = emotion regulation. In models predicting ER success: experience, reactivity refers to the experience or expression of the target emotion on reactivity trials (e.g., experience or expression of disgust with disgust clip when watching without instructions to regulate emotions). In models predicting ER success: expression, reactivity refers to the expression of the target emotion on reactivity trials.

*

p < .05,

**

p < .01,

***

p < .001

Main Effects of Age (H1) and Cognition (H2)

Results from models examining main effects of age and cognition are presented in Table 2, Model 1. In contrast with our hypothesis (H1), age was not associated with ER success in models predicting experience (b = −0.003, SE = 0.004, p = .488) or expression (b = −0.0001, SE = 0.0002, p = .616) when accounting for fluid cognitive ability. Age was associated with lower ER success in models predicting both experience (b = −0.007, SE = 0.003, p = .027) and expression (b = −0.0004, SE = 0.0002, p = .017) when accounting for crystallized cognitive ability. There was no main effect of fluid cognitive ability on ER success as measured by experience of the target emotion (b = 0.007, SE = 0.005, p = .153) or expression of the target emotion (b = 0.0005, SE = 0.0003, p = .096). However, consistent with H2, crystallized cognitive ability was associated with higher ER success as measured by both experience (b = 0.01, SE = 0.006, p = .031) and expression (b = 0.001, SE = 0.0003, p = .014) of the target emotion.

Table 2.

Results from Multilevel Models with Age and Cognitive Ability Predicting Emotion Regulation Success

Model Model 1 Model 2
b SE p b SE p
ER Success - Experience
 Intercept 5.52 0.09 5.51 0.10
 Fluid Cognitive Ability 0.007 0.005 .153 0.007 0.005 .163
 Age −0.003 0.004 .488 −0.003 0.004 .492
 Disgust Film Type −2.81*** 0.13 <.001 −2.81*** 0.13 <.001
 Sadness Film Type −2.57*** 0.13 <.001 −2.57*** 0.13 <.001
 Amusement Film Type 0.59*** 0.13 <.001 0.59*** 0.13 <.001
 Reactivity 0.42*** 0.03 <.001 0.42*** 0.03 <.001
 Fluid Cognitive Ability X Age 0.00001 0.0003 .968
ER Success - Experience
 Intercept 5.51 0.09 5.51 0.09
 Crystallized Cognitive Ability 0.01* 0.006 .031 0.01* 0.006 .027
 Age −0.007* 0.003 .027 −0.007* 0.003 .027
 Disgust Film Type −2.81*** 0.13 <.001 −2.81*** 0.13 <.001
 Sadness Film Type −2.57*** 0.13 <.001 −2.57*** 0.13 <.001
 Amusement Film Type 0.59*** 0.13 <.001 0.59*** 0.13 <.001
 Reactivity 0.41*** 0.03 <.001 0.41*** 0.03 <.001
 Fluid Cognitive Ability X Age 0.00002 0.0003 .942
ER Success - Expression
 Intercept 0.14 0.01 0.14 0.01
 Fluid Cognitive Ability 0.0005 0.0003 .096 0.0005 0.0002 .108
 Age −0.0001 0.0002 .616 −0.0001 0.0002 .618
 Disgust Film Type 0.74*** 0.01 <.001 0.74*** 0.01 <.001
 Sadness Film Type 0.58*** 0.01 <.001 0.58*** 0.01 <.001
 Amusement Film Type 0.21*** 0.01 <.001 0.21*** 0.01 <.001
 Reactivity 0.53*** 0.05 <.001 0.53*** 0.05 <.001
 Fluid Cognitive Ability X Age −0.000002 0.00002 .918
ER Success - Expression
 Intercept 0.14 0.01 0.14 0.01
 Crystallized Cognitive Ability 0.001* 0.0003 .014 0.001* 0.0004 .013
 Age −0.0004* 0.0002 .017 −0.0005* 0.0002 .015
 Disgust Film Type 0.74*** 0.01 <.001 0.74*** 0.01 <.001
 Sadness Film Type 0.58*** 0.01 <.001 0.58*** 0.01 <.001
 Amusement Film Type 0.21*** 0.01 <.001 0.21*** 0.01 <.001
 Reactivity 0.52*** 0.05 <.001 0.52*** 0.05 <.001
 Crystallized Cognitive Ability X Age 0.00001 0.00002 .519
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Note. Unstandardized estimates and standard errors are presented. ER = emotion regulation. In models predicting ER success – experience, reactivity refers to the experience of the target emotion on reactivity trials. In models predicting ER success – expression, reactivity refers to the expression of the target emotion on reactivity trials.

*

p < .05,

**

p < .01,

***

p < .001

Cognition as a Moderator of Age Effects (H3)

Results from models examining cognition X age interactions are presented in Table 2, Model 2. In contrast with our hypothesis, fluid cognitive ability X age (b = 0.00001, SE = 0.0003, p = .968) and crystallized cognitive ability X age (b = 0.00002, SE = 0.0003, p = .942) did not predict ER success as measured by experience of the target emotion. Likewise, fluid cognitive ability X age (b = −0.000002, SE = 0.00002, p = .918) and crystallized cognitive ability X age (b = 0.00001, SE = 0.00002, p = .519) did not predict ER success as measured by expression of the target emotion.

Film Clip Type as a Moderator of Effects (Exploratory)

Results from exploratory models examining film clip type as a moderator of age and cognition effects are presented in Tables S3–S4. The effect of fluid cognitive ability predicting ER success as measured by experience of the target emotion varied significantly by clip type. Specifically, a fluid cognitive ability X disgust film clip interaction (b = 0.03, SE = 0.01, p = .005) and a fluid cognitive ability X sadness film clip interaction (b = 0.02, SE = 0.01, p = .043) were present. We followed up with simple slopes analyses and found that fluid cognitive ability was associated with higher ER success (experience) with the disgust clip (b = 0.03, SE = 0.009, p = .002) and sadness clip (b = 0.02, SE = 0.009, p = .012), but not the contentment clip (b = −0.0008, SE = 0.008, p = .335) or amusement clip (b = 0.02, SE = 0.009, p = .070). See Figure 1a.

Figure 1.

Figure 1.

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Emotion regulation (ER) success, as indicated by experience of the target emotion. (A) Fluid cognitive ability was associated with higher ER success as measured by experience of the target emotion when regulating sadness and disgust, but not when regulating amusement and contentment. (B) Age was associated with lower ER success as measured by experience of the target emotion when regulating sadness and disgust, but not when regulating amusement and contentment.

Similarly, the effect of age predicting ER success as measured by experience of the target emotion varied significantly by film clip type, with age X disgust film clip (b = −0.02, SE = 0.007, p = .040) and age X sadness film clip (b = −0.02, SE = 0.007, p = .035) interactions being present. Simple slopes analyses revealed that age was associated with lower ER success (experience) with the disgust clip (b = −0.01, SE = 0.007, p = .036) and sadness clip (b = −0.01, SE = 0.007, p = .032), but not the contentment clip (b = 0.007, SE = 0.006, p = .241) or amusement clip (b = −0.008, SE = 0.007, p = .212). These age X film clip type interactions were present both in the model controlling for fluid cognitive ability and in the model controlling for crystallized cognitive ability. See Figure 1b.

Effects of fluid cognitive ability did not vary by film clip type in predicting ER success as indexed by expression of the target emotion (ps > .05). However, an age X amusement film clip type interaction (b = −0.001, SE = 0.0004, p = .035) was present predicting ER success as indexed by emotion expression. Simple slopes analyses revealed that age was associated with lower ER success (expression) with the amusement film clip (b = −0.001, SE = 0.0004, p = .045), but not with the contentment clip (b = 0.0004, SE = 0.0003, p = .206), disgust clip (b = −0.001, SE = 0.0004, p = .054), or sadness clip (b = −0.001, SE = 0.0004, p = .122). This age X amusement film clip type interaction was present in the model controlling for fluid cognitive ability, but not in the model controlling for crystallized cognitive ability.

Effects of crystallized cognitive ability did not vary by film clip type in predicting ER success as indexed by experience of the target emotion (ps > .09) or expression of the target emotion (ps > .41).

We also explored cognition X age X film clip type interactions and found that none of these three-way interactions were significant (ps > .26). Finally, we conducted exploratory models adding nonlinear (quadratic) effects of age and cognition to our primary models, and none were significant (ps > .15). These non-significant quadratic effects of age and cognition did not vary by film clip type (ps > .07).

Discussion

Examining how resources that shift with age, such as cognition, are associated with ER processes is important for understanding how to maintain emotional well-being across the lifespan. In the present study, an adult lifespan sample completed cognitive tests and an ER task involving stimuli of varying valence and arousal levels and instructions to downregulate negative emotions or upregulate positive emotions. We hypothesized that age is associated with greater ER success (H1), cognitive ability (both fluid and crystallized) is associated with greater ER success (H2), and cognitive ability moderates the association between age and ER success (H3). In contrast with H1, we found that age was associated with poorer ER success as indexed by experience of the target emotion when regulating disgust and sadness, as well as poorer ER success as indexed by expression of the target of the emotion when accounting for crystallized, but not fluid, cognitive ability. We found that fluid cognitive ability was associated with better ER success as indexed by experience of the target emotion, particularly when regulating disgust and sadness, providing partial support for H2. Replicating prior work (Growney & English, 2023), we found that crystallized cognitive ability was associated with higher ER success, regardless of the emotion being regulated and across both modalities of assessing ER success, providing support for H2. In contrast with H3, effects of age did not vary by cognitive ability.

Age-Related Challenges Downregulating Sadness and Disgust

Age was negatively associated with ER success when holding crystallized cognitive ability constant, and age was negatively associated with ER success specifically with negative stimuli when holding fluid cognitive ability constant. Age-related decrements in ER success were present when downregulating sadness and disgust, but not when upregulating amusement and contentment. Downregulating negative emotions may present specific regulatory challenges for older adults, such as the need to override empathic engagement with sadness or manage visceral aversions with disgust. Older adults tend to be more prosocial than younger adults (for meta-analyses, see Li et al., 2024; Pollerhoff et al., 2024), and may therefore have competing goals when exposed to social loss-themed stimuli. Similarly, high-arousal emotions such as disgust may impose difficulties for older adults beyond the required fluid cognitive resources for successful regulation. According to the strength and vulnerability integration model (SAVI, Charles, 2010), older adults’ poorer physiological flexibility contributes to difficulties regulating high-arousal negative emotions in situations where they cannot be avoided. In contrast, upregulating positive emotions like contentment and amusement may align more readily with older adults’ motivational priorities and habitual strategy use (e.g., savoring; Growney, Carstensen, & English, 2025), potentially explaining their relatively well-maintained ability to effectively engage in pro-hedonic ER with positive stimuli.

Results from the present study are in contrast with recent work finding age-related advantages in success regulating emotions in daily life in both cognitively normal older adults and older adults with mild cognitive impairment, as assessed during an experience sampling protocol (Lai et al., 2025). This discrepancy may be attributable to age differences in emotion regulation contexts which are standardized in a laboratory task. Alternatively, prior results may have stemmed from the focus on perceived success and emotional experience rather than other objective indicators as we do in the present study. More consistent with the present study’s findings, a recent laboratory study using high-arousal negative film stimuli found older adults with mild cognitive impairment to exhibit worse ER success than cognitively normal older adults and young adults, as measured both through subjective ER success and emotional expression (Growney et al., 2025c). In sum, age-related advantages in ER may be evident in daily life, where individuals have more control over the emotional contexts to which they are exposed and are unlikely to encounter intensely negative stimuli, whereas age-related difficulties in ER may be apparent when exposure to highly intense negative stimuli in laboratory settings which disproportionately challenge older adults’ regulatory capacities.

Fluid Cognition and Crystallized Cognition as Differentially Linked to ER Success

Findings suggest that fluid cognitive ability is linked with successful downregulation of disgust and sadness (negative emotions) but not linked with successful upregulation of amusement and contentment (positive emotions). Prior work identifying associations between cognitive ability and ER success has typically focused on downregulation of negative emotions (for review, see Toh et al, 2024). The present findings qualify this trend by demonstrating that fluid cognitive ability is particularly relevant in contexts that involve attempts to decrease negative emotion, aligning with a prior study uncovering an association between tests of fluid cognitive ability and ER success specific to downregulating sadness (Growney & English, 2023). Consistent with this inference, recent work examining perceived cognitive demands associated with different ER strategies found that those focused on upregulating positive emotions (e.g., savoring) were rated as least demanding (Growney & English, 2025b). One possibility is that dampening negative emotions places greater demands on fluid cognitive processes, as it can entail abilities such as inhibitory control (e.g., inhibiting attention to salient negative information) and processing speed (e.g., rapidly implementing regulatory responses before a negative emotion takes hold), and working memory (e.g., monitoring and updating information about one’s external situation and internal state to make necessary adjustments; Pruessner et al., 2020). In contrast, enhancing or maintaining positive emotion often involves elaborating on already pleasant stimuli (Bryant, 2003) rather than inhibiting attention to competing information or acting under time pressure, potentially reducing the extent to which fluid cognitive ability constrains regulation success in positive contexts.

Crystallized cognitive ability was associated with more successful ER across all emotion types, as assessed both by experience and expression of the target emotion. These findings replicate and extend prior work documenting associations between crystallized cognitive ability and ER success as assessed by experience of negative and positive emotions during film clips eliciting disgust, sadness, and amusement (Growney & English, 2023). Notably, both Growney and English (2023) and the present study followed a procedure in which participants selected their own ER strategy rather than using an assigned strategy, as was done in prior work finding null associations between crystallized cognitive ability and ER success (McRae et al., 2012; Opitz et al., 2014). Situations allowing for self-selection of strategies may better approximate how individuals regulate emotions in daily life. Individuals may benefit less from their life experience and accumulated knowledge when they are not given freedom to draw on these resources.

The present study’s findings extend those from Growney and English (2023) in several ways. First, we included indices of emotional expression as well as emotional experience, presenting converging evidence across two modalities to strengthen confidence in the findings. Second, we included low-arousal positive stimuli, which is a relatively desirable emotional state in older adulthood (Scheibe et al., 2013), and demonstrated that positive associations between crystallized cognition and ER success extend to success with upregulating this emotion. Third, we had sufficient power in the present study to test if cognition moderated age effects, and found that the effects of fluid and crystallized cognitive ability did not vary by age, suggesting that crystallized cognition is an important resource across the lifespan for effective ER.

Crystallized abilities such as vocabulary and reading skills are shaped throughout the course of one’s life through exposure to social and cultural information (Ackerman, 1996; Stanovich & Cunningham, 1992). This accumulated knowledge may equip individuals with a more nuanced understanding of ways to effectively label, interpret, and manage emotional states. For example, verbal skills may facilitate labeling of emotions in a way that aids regulators in understanding the mismatch between their current and desired emotional state, which could help in selecting an effective ER strategy (although verbalizing negative emotions may have deleterious effects on ER success; Nook et al., 2021). Verbal skills may also facilitate the generation of effective reappraisals or alternate ways of framing an emotional situation to aid in ER. In general, those who perform well on tests of crystallized cognitive ability have a broad base of knowledge, as well as ability to access and apply their knowledge to a given situation. Applied to ER, those high in crystallized cognitive ability may have well-scripted ER strategies stored in their knowledge base from which they can select, complemented by knowledge from past experiences about which ER strategy might be most effective in a given experience and how to implement it. Future work may consider whether individuals with greater crystallized cognitive ability have a wider repertoire of ER strategies or instead have learned what works well in the situations they tend to encounter and have optimized the use of selected effective strategies. That is, individuals may benefit from a broad knowledge base of ER strategies, and/or a specialized knowledge base that includes information about how strategies are effectively implemented in a variety of situations.

Limitations and Future Directions

Several limitations should be noted. First, although the present study’s participants spanned a broad adult age range, its cross-sectional design precludes conclusions about within-person change in how cognitive resources predict successful ER. Longitudinal studies are needed to assess how fluid and crystallized cognitive abilities and ER processes may change together across the lifespan. Second, while our film clip stimuli were balanced across valence and arousal, the study focused on four discrete emotions (disgust, sadness, amusement, and contentment). Future research may use stimuli eliciting emotions such as fear (Growney et al., 2025c), which one may be more motivated to regulate in daily life than disgust, and happiness or joy, which may better align with ideal affective states than amusement and contentment (e.g., among Americans: Tsai, 2007). Third, although AI-based expression coding offers objectivity, it may not capture individual nuances in emotional expression. Importantly, participants were instructed to regulate their inner experience of emotions and were not given instructions regarding their outer expression of emotions, meaning that expression is a less clear indicator of success which is only loosely coupled with emotion experience in general (Gross et al., 2000) and in the present study. Individuals may have engaged in expressive suppression (Kring et al., 1994), meaning they attempted to downregulate their outer expression of emotions they were experiencing. Additionally, individuals vary in their expressivity, particularly when there is not a clear audience for their emotions (Crivelli & Fridlund, 2018), meaning expression may be a less-accurate indicator of internal experiences for some than others. Effects regarding fluid cognitive ability were not robust across ER success indices, with null effects being present with the expression outcome, highlighting the need to replicate these findings. On the other hand, effects of crystallized cognitive ability were robust across experience and expression indices, film clip types, and consistent with prior work (Growney & English, 2024), supporting the reliability and generalizability of these findings. Future work may consider how crystallized cognitive ability contributes to ability to successfully regulate emotions in daily life contexts. The present study’s design allowed for participants to implement self-selected stored strategies, but we are unable to isolate effects of cognition on the strategy selection phase versus the implementation phase. Future research may consider whether crystallized cognitive ability is particularly important for knowing which strategy to select for a given situation. Finally, future research would also benefit from more fine-grained measurement of ER dynamics, including the timing, sequencing, and switching of strategies within ER episodes, as well as individuals’ daily life use of ER strategies in relation to implementation of the strategies in controlled laboratory contexts. Recent work suggests there is minimal overlap in ER strategy use between daily life and laboratory settings, though older adults may be most successful in the laboratory when using strategies that align with their habitual ER in daily life (Growney & English, 2024). More research is needed to better understand how strategy selection in the laboratory differs from daily life contexts.

Conclusion

Taken together, findings suggest that effective ER relies in part on the regulator’s available resources such as fluid cognition (especially for negative emotions) and crystallized cognition, the latter of which may reflect life experience and accumulated knowledge, and perhaps in this case, as ability to store and access ER strategies. While the importance of fluid cognitive ability may be specific to downregulating negative emotions, crystallized cognition appears to be relevant both for downregulating negative emotions and upregulating positive emotions. Both types of cognitive resources (i.e., fluid and crystallized cognitive ability) seem to retain their importance across the adult lifespan, with effects not varying by age. Interventions aimed at training fluid cognitive abilities have been proposed to improve ER skills (e.g., Cohen & Mor, 2018; Vanderhasselt et al., 2021; Xiu et al., 2016). Providing older adults with opportunities to continue gaining and utilizing expertise in social settings may be an additional avenue to increase their propensity to maintain both emotional well-being and crystallized resources involved in ER. Finally, older adults’ relative maintenance of ER ability regarding upregulation of positive emotions, but not downregulation of negative emotions, suggests that age-related differences in emotional well-being are not driven by improvements in ability to manage negative emotions.

Supplementary Material

Supplemental Material

Public Significance Statement.

Results indicate that older adults are relatively less successful than young adults at down regulating negative emotions, but older individuals seem to retain their ability to upregulate positive emotions. Additionally, associations between different types of cognitive ability and successful emotion regulation suggest that across age, fluid cognition is important for downregulating negative emotions, whereas crystallized cognition is important for effective regulation of both negative and positive emotions.

Acknowledgments

We have no conflicts of interest to disclose. Hypotheses and analyses were preregistered (Growney et al., 2021). R code, output, and study materials are available on OSF (Growney et al., 2025). This research was funded by the National Institute on Aging at the National Institutes of Health (grant numbers R03AG057795 to T. E., T32AG000030 to D. A. B.). Correspondence for this article should be addressed to Claire Growney, Department of Psychology, Building 420, 450 Jane Stanford Way, Stanford, CA 94305.

Footnotes

1

Results were unaffected across all analyses when controlling for whether participants completed the pre-pandemic onset or post-pandemic onset procedure.

2

Our preregistered plan entailed use of human coding for emotion expression data. However, our coders did not reach the standard guideline for acceptable coding reliability (ICC > .70), and we therefore opted to use automated expression coding via the Hume AI platform to ensure consistency and objectivity in expression measurement.

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