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We investigated alexithymia and the fuctuation of anxiety in skydiving women. Alexithymia significantly moderated the pre- to postjump fluctuation of state anxiety such that only alexithymic skydivers’ anxiety diminished as a consequence of performing a skydive. This suggests that skydiving is an effective means of emotion regulation for alexithymic women. However, the significant rise in anxiety shortly after landing suggests that any emotional benefits are short-lived. No anxiety fuctuations emerged for nonalexithymic skydivers. The Alexithymia × Time interaction remained significant when controlling for age, experience, and trait anxiety. Results are discussed in terms of the potential dependence on risk-taking activities for alexithymic women.

Sensation seeking has been widely studied when investigating individual differences in the propensity for taking risks. However, risk taking can serve many different goals beyond the simple management of physiological arousal. The present study is an investigation of affect self-regulation as a predictor of risk-taking behaviors in high-risk sport. Risk-taking behaviors, negative affectivity, escape self-awareness strategy, and sensation seeking data were obtained from 265 high-risk sportsmen. Moderated hierarchical regression analysis revealed significant main and interaction effects of negative affectivity and escape self-awareness strategy in predicting risk-taking behaviors: high-risk sportsmen’s negative affectivity leads them to adopt risk-taking behaviors only if they also use escape self-awareness strategy. Furthermore, the affective model remained significant when controlling for sensation seeking. The present study contributes to an in-depth understanding of risk taking in high-risk sport.

This study aimed to investigate if the impact of both recent and long-term physical activity on age-related cognitive decline would be modified by sex. One-hundred thirty-five men (N = 67) and women (N = 68) aged 18 to 80 years completed the Modifiable Activity Questionnaire and the Historical Leisure Activity Questionnaire. A composite score of cognitive functions was computed from five experimental tasks. Hierarchical regression analyses performed to test the moderating effect of recent physical activity on age-cognition relationship had not revealed significant result regardless of sex. Conversely, past long-term physical activity was found to slow down the age-related cognitive decline among women (β = 0.22, p = .03), but not men. The findings support a lifecourse approach in identifying determinants of cognitive aging and the importance of taking into account the moderating role of sex. This article presented potential explanations for these moderators and future avenues to explore.