Identifying and Bolstering Emotional Resources for Daily Cognitive Functioning Across the Adult Lifespan [PhD Project]
The workforce is aging due to changes in retirement age and demographic shifts. At the same time, many office jobs become more cognitively demanding as routine tasks become increasingly automated. As these societal changes require people to work longer in cognitively demanding jobs, they need effective resources to maintain their cognitive functioning. The proposed project aims to identify age-specific emotional resources, such as positive emotions and emotion regulation strategies, to aid people with cognitive job demands like administrative tasks or programming.
This project will take a within-person approach to (1) identify age-specific daily emotional resources that can buffer cognitive demands and (2) design a personalized intervention to enhance such resources. We will be recruiting 250 office workers for a three-week-long experience sampling study and consequently the intervention. Upon identifying the emotional resources, we aim to enhance their use with a personalized training intervention. Participants will be provided with personalized daily exercises to enact those emotional resources that seem to be most effective for them. This experimental approach will allow us to evaluate the cognitive benefits of workplace interventions aimed at improving the use of emotional resources.
Team Composition
- Patrick Klaiber is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Developmental Psychology and an expert in daily life assessments of positive resources across the adult lifespan. He has extensive experience in using micro-longitudinal methods in the context of stress, positive events, and aging.
- Keri Pekaar is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Human Resource Studies and specializes in the role of emotions and emotional resources in daily work life. Besides, she conducts intervention studies on proactive behavior.
- Dorien Kooij is a Full Professor in the Department of Human Resource Studies and an expert on older worker strategies and needs. She has extensive experience collaborating with local organizations, and designing workplace interventions.
- Yvonne Brehmer is a Full Professor for Successful Aging in the Department of Developmental Psychology and has expertise in the design and evaluation of interventions. She also has extensive experience investigating the determinants and outcomes of cognitive aging.
Cross-cutting themes
The Herbert Simon Research Institute for Health, Well-being, and Adaptiveness is a research center devoted to carrying out excellent, state of the art research in order to contribute to healthy and resilient people. We have selected three themes, which involve the collaboration between various Departments and address actual themes in need of both fundamental and applied research.