Max Planck Research Group "Affect Across the Lifespan"

Do emotional experiences change from adolescence to old age? And do people from various age groups differ in their abilities to understand and deal with affective aspects of life? These are questions that the Max Planck Research Group "Affect Across the Lifespan" seeks to answer. Without the abilities to experience, express, understand, and control affective states—such as anger or joy—we would not succeed in many life tasks, from forming and maintaining social relations to successfully pursuing a career.

Our research projects aim at contributing new insights on age-related differences in affective experiences and competencies, focusing primarily on the age range from adolescence to old age.

Unique features of our methodological approach are the combination of a mobile phone-based experience-sampling technology with psycho-physiological monitoring and well-controlled experimental paradigms, and the consideration that affective functioning takes place in, and is influenced by, the individual's social context.

We started our work in January 2009.