Older age linked to less repetitive negative thinking
Smartphone surveys of 4,826 adults aged 18–100 supported a way to measure recurring negative thoughts and linked their fluctuations to poorer mental health.
Our read
Populations- Studied:
- Preprint: cross-sectional study of 4,826 adults aged 18–100 years (Independent replication)
- What changed:
- Repetitive negative thinking was lower at older ages
- The catch:
- Changes in individuals’ thinking as they aged were not measured
- Why it’s aging research:
- Change across ages, or exceptional longevity.
Editor of record: Boris Djordjevic · AgingResearch.News
Adults aged 18–100, 4,826 in total, completed smartphone surveys about their thoughts and mood in an observational study. Researchers identified patterns in responses from half the sample and confirmed the structure in the other half.
One pattern included more negative, less intentional thoughts that were less related to current tasks. It was associated with measures of habitual repetitive negative thinking and with psychological distress, depression, anxiety and loneliness. Greater variability and instability in this pattern’s scores were linked to poorer mental health. Older age was associated with lower levels of this thought pattern. The pattern statistically accounted for part of the cross-sectional association between age and mental health outcomes.
Why it matters
Measuring thoughts in daily life offers a way to examine how repetitive negative thinking relates to mental health across adulthood.
Caveats
The age comparisons were cross-sectional, so differences between younger and older participants do not show how individuals’ thinking changes as they age. The findings come from a preprint that has not been peer-reviewed.
The paper
University of Arizona
PsyArXiv, Sep 3, 2026, Open access, Preprint, not yet peer-reviewed
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