Emotion concepts are representations that enable people to make sense of their own and others’ emotions. The present study, theoretically driven by the conceptual act theory, explores the overall spectrum of emotion concepts in older adults and compares them with the emotion concepts of younger adults. Data from 178 older adults (⩾55 years) and 176 younger adults (20–30 years) were collected using the Semantic Emotion Space Assessment task. The arousal and valence of 16 discrete emotions – anger, fear, sadness, happiness, disgust, hope, love, hate, contempt, guilt, compassion, shame, gratefulness, envy, disappointment, and jealousy – were rated by the participants on a graphic scale bar. The results show that (a) older and younger adults did not differ in the mean valence ratings of emotion concepts, which indicates that older adults do not differ from younger adults in the way they conceptualise how pleasant or unpleasant emotions are. Furthermore, (b) older men rated emotion concepts as more arousing than younger men, (c) older adults rated sadness, disgust, contempt, guilt, and compassion as more arousing and (d) jealousy as less arousing than younger adults. The results of the present study indicate that age-related differentiation of conceptual knowledge seems to proceed more in the way that individuals understand how arousing their subjective representations of emotions are rather than how pleasant they are.

情感概念是使人们能够理解自己和他人情感的表示形式。本研究在理论上受概念行为理论的驱动，探讨了老年人情绪概念的总体范围，并将其与年轻人情绪概念进行了比较。使用语义情感空间评估任务，收集了来自178位年龄较大的成年人（55岁）和176位年龄较小的成年人（20-30岁）的数据。参与者在图形上对16种离散情感的唤起和效价进行了评估-愤怒，恐惧，悲伤，幸福，厌恶，希望，爱，恨，鄙视，罪恶，同情，羞耻，感恩，嫉妒，失望和嫉妒–比例尺。结果表明：（a）老年人和年轻人在情感概念的平均价数上没有差异，这表明，老年人与年轻人在概念化情感上有多愉悦或不愉快的方式并无不同。此外，（b）老年人对情感概念的评价要比年轻男人高；（c）老年人对悲伤，厌恶，鄙视，内和同情的评价比对年轻人要高；（d）嫉妒比对年轻人的唤醒要少。本研究的结果表明，与年龄相关的概念知识的分化似乎以个体理解情感的主观表达方式如何令人愉悦而不是情感愉悦的方式进行。比起年轻人，同情更能引起人的激怒；（d）嫉妒不如年轻人。本研究的结果表明，与年龄相关的概念知识的分化似乎更多地以个人理解情感的主观表征如何引起而不是令人愉悦的方式进行。比起年轻人，同情更能引起人的激怒；（d）嫉妒不如年轻人。本研究的结果表明，与年龄相关的概念知识的分化似乎更多地以个人理解情感的主观表征如何引起而不是令人愉悦的方式进行。