Advanced age is often associated with increased emotional well-being, with older adults reporting more positive and less negative affect than younger adults. Here, we test whether this pattern held during the initial outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic that disproportionately put older adults at risk. We additionally examine potential moderating effects of daily activity and social connectedness, which have been shown to benefit mental health across the life span. We regularly assessed a large sample of adults ages 18-89 using online surveys. As preregistered for this report (https://osf.io/tb4qv), we focus on self-reported measures of affect, depression, stress, and worry as well as self-reported daily activity and perception of social isolation during two time windows for adults in the United States: early (mid-March to early April) and later (mid-April to early May) periods during the spring phase of the pandemic. Increased age benefited emotional well-being for multiple metrics during both time windows assessed. Furthermore, the results confirmed that exercise and perception of social connectedness can buffer against negative mental health outcomes across all ages, although the beneficial effects of age remained even when controlling for these influences. The one exception was worry about one's own health: Once exercise and social connectedness were controlled, increased age was associated with more worry. The results overall suggest that, at least among adults with access to technology, older age was associated with greater resilience during the spring phase of the pandemic. Thus, increased resilience of older adults demonstrated previously extends to the context of the onset of a pandemic. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).
The relation between age and experienced stress, worry, affect, and depression during the spring 2020 phase of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States