Age differences in emotional intelligence – are we getting better? Processing of emotional information in adolescence and mature age This study examined relationships between age and the ability to process emotional information. Emotion processing is defined as the ability to organize and represent emotional experience and includes the ability to recognize and label facial expressions of basic emotions, the ability to express emotions, and the ability to regulate the intensity with which emotions are perceived and experienced (Bland, Williams, Scharer, Manning, 2004). The ability to process emotional information is a basic concept of emotional intelligence (Mayer, Caruso, Salovey, 1999). The participants were 77 (37 females and 40 males) in two groups: adolescents (N=38) and middle-aged (N=39). Processing emotional information was measured by Processing of Emotional Information Test (Szczygieł, 2002), based on the theory of cognitive representation of emotion (Maruszewski, Ścigała, 1995). Hypotheses related to age differences, implying that older people process emotional information more accurately than younger was supported in relation to processing of more complex and differentiated material (nonverbal feature). The interpretation of results was performed in reference to the theory of socioemotional selectivity and the concept of postformal thinking. Socioemotional selectivity theory (Carstensen, 1995; Carstensen,Isaacowitz, & Charles, 1999) asserts that changes in the life of older adults result from motivational changes. The concept of postformal thinking assumes a progression in thinking from dualistic or absolutist thought to more subjectively determined modes of thinking in which the relativistic and/or dialectical nature of knowledge is more thoroughly understood (Labouvie-Vief, Diehl, 2000; Kielar-Turska, 2000; Gurba, 2006)
