Laura Carstensen - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Laura Carstensen

Recent evidence suggests that emotional well-being improves from early adulthood to old age. This... more Recent evidence suggests that emotional well-being improves from early adulthood to old age. This study used experience-sampling to examine the developmental course of emotional experience in a representative sample

Effective social and emotional functioning is essential to healthy relationships at any age. Alth... more Effective social and emotional functioning is essential to healthy relationships at any age. Although the understanding of socioemotional functioning in late life has increased in recent decades, most of the existing research relies on information reported by individuals on questionnaires or during interviews. Social neuroscience promises to uncover important and novel information that can greatly enhance this important area of research. In particular, social neuroscience is allowing tests of hypotheses that cannot be tested well using traditional behavioral methods. Throughout this chapter we identify the important contributions that social neuroscience has made to our understanding of the socioemotional aspects of adult development and aging. A growing body of research suggests that the ability to regulate emotion remains stable and in some aspects may improve across the adult life span (Charles & Carstensen, 2007). Compared to their younger counterparts, older adults recover more...

The COVID-19 pandemic is creating unprecedented, sustained, and unavoidable stress for the entire... more The COVID-19 pandemic is creating unprecedented, sustained, and unavoidable stress for the entire population, with older people facing particularly heightened risk of contracting the virus and suffering severe complications including death. The present study was conducted when the pandemic was spreading exponentially in the United States. To address important theoretical questions about age differences in emotional experience in times of crisis, we surveyed a representative sample of 945 Americans aged 18-76 and assessed the frequency and intensity of a range of positive and negative emotions. We also assessed perceived risk of contagion and complications from the virus, as well as personality, health, and demographic characteristics. Age was associated with relatively greater emotional well-being with and without controlling for perceived risk and other covariates. Findings extend previous research about age and emotion by demonstrating that older adults’ relatively better emotiona...

Cognition and Emotion, 2018

Thirty years ago, the subfields of emotion and cognition operated relatively independently and th... more Thirty years ago, the subfields of emotion and cognition operated relatively independently and the associated science reflected the tacit view that they were distinct constructs. Today, questions about the integration of cognition and emotion are among the most interesting questions in the field. I offer a personal view of the key changes that fuelled this shift over time and describe research from my group that unfolded in parallel and led to the identification of the positivity effect.

Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 2018

Relative to younger adults, older adults attend to and remember positive information more than ne... more Relative to younger adults, older adults attend to and remember positive information more than negative information. This shift from a negativity bias in younger age to a preference for positive information in later life is termed the 'positivity effect.' Based on nearly two decades of research and recent evidence from neuroscience, we argue that the effect reflects age-related changes in motivation that direct behavior and cognitive processing rather than neural or cognitive decline. Understanding the positivity effect, including conditions that reduce and enhance it, can inform effective public health and educational messages directed at older people.

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 2003

Two studies examined age differences in recall and recognition memory for positive, negative, and... more Two studies examined age differences in recall and recognition memory for positive, negative, and neutral stimuli. In Study 1, younger, middle-aged, and older adults were shown images on a computer screen and, after a distraction task, were asked first to recall as many as they could and then to identify previously shown images from a set of old and new ones. The relative number of negative images compared with positive and neutral images recalled decreased with each successively older age group. Recognition memory showed a similar decrease with age in the relative memory advantage for negative pictures. In Study 2, the largest age differences in recall and recognition accuracy were also for the negative images. Findings are consistent with socioemotional selectivity theory, which posits greater investment in emotion regulation with age.

Psychology and aging, Jan 20, 2015

Research and theory suggest that emotional goals are increasingly prioritized with age. Related e... more Research and theory suggest that emotional goals are increasingly prioritized with age. Related empirical work has shown that, compared with younger adults, older adults attend to and remember positive information more than negative information. This age-related positivity effect has been eliminated in experiments that have explicitly demanded processing of both positive and negative information. In the present study, we explored whether a reduction of the preference for positive information over negative information appears when the material being reviewed holds personal relevance for the individual. Older participants whose health varied from poor to very good reviewed written material prior to making decisions about health related and non-health-related issues. As predicted, older adults in relatively poor health (compared with those in relatively good health) showed less positivity in review of information while making health-related decisions. In contrast, positivity emerged re...

Psychological science, 2004

As they age, adults experience less negative emotion, come to pay less attention to negative than... more As they age, adults experience less negative emotion, come to pay less attention to negative than to positive emotional stimuli, and become less likely to remember negative than positive emotional materials. This profile of findings suggests that, with age, the amygdala may show decreased reactivity to negative information while maintaining or increasing its reactivity to positive information. We used event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging to assess whether amygdala activation in response to positive and negative emotional pictures changes with age. Both older and younger adults showed greater activation in the amygdala for emotional than for neutral pictures; however, for older adults, seeing positive pictures led to greater amygdala activation than seeing negative pictures, whereas this was not the case for younger adults.

Handbook of the Psychology of Aging, 2006

Oxford Handbooks Online, 2011

Effective social and emotional functioning is 1 essential to healthy relationships at any age. Al... more Effective social and emotional functioning is 1 essential to healthy relationships at any age. Although the understanding of socioemotional functioning in late life has increased in recent decades, most of the existing research relies on information reported by individuals on questionnaires or during interviews. Social neuroscience promises to uncover important and novel information that can greatly enhance this important area of research. In particular, social neuroscience is allowing tests of hypotheses that cannot be tested well using traditional behavioral methods. Throughout During the preparation of this chapter, Gregory R. Samanez-Larkin was supported by National Institute on Aging pre-doctoral NRSA AG032804 and Laura L. Carstensen was supported by National Institute on Aging MERIT award AG08816. The authors thank Mara Mather and Ben Eppinger for comments.

Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2005

As people get older, they experience fewer negative emotions. Strategic processes in older adults... more As people get older, they experience fewer negative emotions. Strategic processes in older adults' emotional attention and memory might play a role in this variation with age. Older adults show more emotionally gratifying memory distortion for past choices and autobiographical information than younger adults do. In addition, when shown stimuli that vary in affective valence, positive items account for a larger proportion of older adults' subsequent memories than those of younger adults. This positivity effect in older adults' memories seems to be due to their greater focus on emotion regulation and to be implemented by cognitive control mechanisms that enhance positive and diminish negative information. These findings suggest that both cognitive abilities and motivation contribute to older adults' improved emotion regulation.

Science, 2006

The subjective sense of future time plays an essential role in human motivation. Gradually, time ... more The subjective sense of future time plays an essential role in human motivation. Gradually, time left becomes a better predictor than chronological age for a range of cognitive, emotional, and motivational variables. Socioemotional selectivity theory maintains that constraints on time horizons shift motivational priorities in such a way that the regulation of emotional states becomes more important than other types of goals. This motivational shift occurs with age but also appears in other contexts (for example, geographical relocations, illnesses, and war) that limit subjective future time.

Psychology and Aging, 2009

Older adults' relatively better memory for positive over negative material (positivity effect) ha... more Older adults' relatively better memory for positive over negative material (positivity effect) has been widely observed in Western samples. This study examined whether a relative preference for positive over negative material is also observed in older Koreans. Younger and older Korean participants viewed images from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS), were tested for recall and recognition of the images, and rated the images for valence. Cultural differences in the valence ratings of images emerged. Once considered, the relative preference for positive over negative material in memory observed in older Koreans was indistinguishable from that observed previously in older Americans.

Psychology and Aging, 2009

A growing body of research suggests that the ability to regulate emotion remains stable or improv... more A growing body of research suggests that the ability to regulate emotion remains stable or improves across the adult life span. Socioemotional selectivity theory maintains that this pattern of findings reflects the prioritization of emotional goals. Given that goal-directed behavior requires attentional control, the present study was designed to investigate age differences in selective attention to emotional lexical stimuli under conditions of emotional interference. Both neural and behavioral measures were obtained during an experiment in which participants completed a flanker task that required them to make categorical judgments about emotional and nonemotional stimuli. Older adults showed interference in both the behavioral and neural measures on control trials but not on emotion trials. Although older adults typically show relatively high levels of interference and reduced cognitive control during nonemotional tasks, they appear to be able to successfully reduce interference during emotional tasks.

Psychology and Aging, 2005

Working memory mediates the short-term maintenance of information. Virtually all empirical resear... more Working memory mediates the short-term maintenance of information. Virtually all empirical research on working memory involves investigations of working memory for verbal and visual information. Whereas aging is typically associated with a deficit in working memory for these types of information, recent findings suggestive of relatively well-preserved long-term memory for emotional information in older adults raise questions about working memory for emotional material. This study examined age differences in working memory for emotional versus visual information. Findings demonstrate that, despite an age-related deficit for the latter, working memory for emotion was unimpaired. Further, older adults exhibited superior performance on positive relative to negative emotion trials, whereas their younger counterparts exhibited the opposite pattern.

Psychology and Aging, 2008

Older adults report less distress in response to interpersonal conflicts than do younger adults, ... more Older adults report less distress in response to interpersonal conflicts than do younger adults, yet few researchers have examined factors that may contribute to these age differences. Emotion regulation is partially determined by the initial cognitive and emotional reactions that events elicit. We examined reported thoughts and emotions of younger and older adults (N = 195) while they listened to three different audio-taped conversations in which people were ostensibly making disparaging remarks about them. At four points during each scenario, the tape paused and participants engaged in a talkaloud procedure and rated their level of anger and sadness. Findings revealed that older adults reported less anger but equal levels of sadness compared to younger adults, and their comments were judged by coders as less negative. Older adults made fewer appraisals about the people speaking on the tape and expressed less interest in learning more about their motives. Together, findings are consistent with age-related increases in processes that promote disengagement from offending situations.

Psychology and Aging, 2011

Recent evidence suggests that emotional well-being improves from early adulthood to old age. This... more Recent evidence suggests that emotional well-being improves from early adulthood to old age. This study used experience-sampling to examine the developmental course of emotional experience in a representative sample of adults spanning early to very late adulthood. Participants (N ϭ 184, Wave 1; N ϭ 191, Wave 2; N ϭ 178, Wave 3) reported their emotional states at five randomly selected times each day for a one week period. Using a measurement burst design, the one-week sampling procedure was repeated five and then ten years later. Cross-sectional and growth curve analyses indicate that aging is associated with more positive overall emotional well-being, with greater emotional stability and with more complexity (as evidenced by greater co-occurrence of positive and negative emotions). These findings remained robust after accounting for other variables that may be related to emotional experience (personality, verbal fluency, physical health, and demographic variables). Finally, emotional experience predicted mortality; controlling for age, sex, and ethnicity, individuals who experienced relatively more positive than negative emotions in everyday life were more likely to have survived over a 13 year period. Findings are discussed in the theoretical context of socioemotional selectivity theory.

Psychology and Aging, 2002

Research has shown that age and ethnicity are associated with individuals' motivations for emotio... more Research has shown that age and ethnicity are associated with individuals' motivations for emotional regulation and social interaction. The authors proposed that these age and ethnicity-related motives would be reflected in storytelling. Women representing 2 age and 2 ethnic groups (young adulthood, old age, African American, European American) told stories to young girls. Stories were coded for emotional, relational, and socialization focus. They predicted that older adults would selectively emphasize positive over negative emotions and would direct more utterances toward their interaction with their listener. The authors expected that African Americans would be more likely to emphasize socialization themes. Results suggest that older adults positively modulate emotional content while storytelling; qualified support was found for hypotheses concerning socialization and interrelational emphasis.

Psychological Science, 2003

We examined age differences in attention to and memory for faces expressing sadness, anger, and h... more We examined age differences in attention to and memory for faces expressing sadness, anger, and happiness. Participants saw a pair of faces, one emotional and one neutral, and then a dot probe that appeared in the location of one of the faces. In two experiments, older adults responded faster to the dot if it was presented on the same side as a neutral face than if it was presented on the same side as a negative face. Younger adults did not exhibit this attentional bias. Interactions of age and valence were also found for memory for the faces, with older adults remembering positive better than negative faces. These findings reveal that in their initial attention, older adults avoid negative information. This attentional bias is consistent with older adults' generally better emotional well-being and their tendency to remember negative less well than positive information.

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2003

Socioemotional selectivity theory holds that people of different ages prioritize different types ... more Socioemotional selectivity theory holds that people of different ages prioritize different types of goals. As people age and increasingly perceive time as finite, they attach greater importance to goals that are emotionally meaningful. Because the goals that people pursue so centrally influence cognition, the authors hypothesize that persuasive messages, specifically advertisements, would be preferred and better remembered by older adults when they promise to help realize emotionally meaningful goals, whereas younger adults would not show this bias. The authors also predict that modifying time perspective would reduce age differences. Findings provide qualified support for each of these predictions.

Recent evidence suggests that emotional well-being improves from early adulthood to old age. This... more Recent evidence suggests that emotional well-being improves from early adulthood to old age. This study used experience-sampling to examine the developmental course of emotional experience in a representative sample

Effective social and emotional functioning is essential to healthy relationships at any age. Alth... more Effective social and emotional functioning is essential to healthy relationships at any age. Although the understanding of socioemotional functioning in late life has increased in recent decades, most of the existing research relies on information reported by individuals on questionnaires or during interviews. Social neuroscience promises to uncover important and novel information that can greatly enhance this important area of research. In particular, social neuroscience is allowing tests of hypotheses that cannot be tested well using traditional behavioral methods. Throughout this chapter we identify the important contributions that social neuroscience has made to our understanding of the socioemotional aspects of adult development and aging. A growing body of research suggests that the ability to regulate emotion remains stable and in some aspects may improve across the adult life span (Charles & Carstensen, 2007). Compared to their younger counterparts, older adults recover more...

The COVID-19 pandemic is creating unprecedented, sustained, and unavoidable stress for the entire... more The COVID-19 pandemic is creating unprecedented, sustained, and unavoidable stress for the entire population, with older people facing particularly heightened risk of contracting the virus and suffering severe complications including death. The present study was conducted when the pandemic was spreading exponentially in the United States. To address important theoretical questions about age differences in emotional experience in times of crisis, we surveyed a representative sample of 945 Americans aged 18-76 and assessed the frequency and intensity of a range of positive and negative emotions. We also assessed perceived risk of contagion and complications from the virus, as well as personality, health, and demographic characteristics. Age was associated with relatively greater emotional well-being with and without controlling for perceived risk and other covariates. Findings extend previous research about age and emotion by demonstrating that older adults’ relatively better emotiona...

Cognition and Emotion, 2018

Thirty years ago, the subfields of emotion and cognition operated relatively independently and th... more Thirty years ago, the subfields of emotion and cognition operated relatively independently and the associated science reflected the tacit view that they were distinct constructs. Today, questions about the integration of cognition and emotion are among the most interesting questions in the field. I offer a personal view of the key changes that fuelled this shift over time and describe research from my group that unfolded in parallel and led to the identification of the positivity effect.

Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 2018

Relative to younger adults, older adults attend to and remember positive information more than ne... more Relative to younger adults, older adults attend to and remember positive information more than negative information. This shift from a negativity bias in younger age to a preference for positive information in later life is termed the 'positivity effect.' Based on nearly two decades of research and recent evidence from neuroscience, we argue that the effect reflects age-related changes in motivation that direct behavior and cognitive processing rather than neural or cognitive decline. Understanding the positivity effect, including conditions that reduce and enhance it, can inform effective public health and educational messages directed at older people.

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 2003

Two studies examined age differences in recall and recognition memory for positive, negative, and... more Two studies examined age differences in recall and recognition memory for positive, negative, and neutral stimuli. In Study 1, younger, middle-aged, and older adults were shown images on a computer screen and, after a distraction task, were asked first to recall as many as they could and then to identify previously shown images from a set of old and new ones. The relative number of negative images compared with positive and neutral images recalled decreased with each successively older age group. Recognition memory showed a similar decrease with age in the relative memory advantage for negative pictures. In Study 2, the largest age differences in recall and recognition accuracy were also for the negative images. Findings are consistent with socioemotional selectivity theory, which posits greater investment in emotion regulation with age.

Psychology and aging, Jan 20, 2015

Research and theory suggest that emotional goals are increasingly prioritized with age. Related e... more Research and theory suggest that emotional goals are increasingly prioritized with age. Related empirical work has shown that, compared with younger adults, older adults attend to and remember positive information more than negative information. This age-related positivity effect has been eliminated in experiments that have explicitly demanded processing of both positive and negative information. In the present study, we explored whether a reduction of the preference for positive information over negative information appears when the material being reviewed holds personal relevance for the individual. Older participants whose health varied from poor to very good reviewed written material prior to making decisions about health related and non-health-related issues. As predicted, older adults in relatively poor health (compared with those in relatively good health) showed less positivity in review of information while making health-related decisions. In contrast, positivity emerged re...

Psychological science, 2004

As they age, adults experience less negative emotion, come to pay less attention to negative than... more As they age, adults experience less negative emotion, come to pay less attention to negative than to positive emotional stimuli, and become less likely to remember negative than positive emotional materials. This profile of findings suggests that, with age, the amygdala may show decreased reactivity to negative information while maintaining or increasing its reactivity to positive information. We used event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging to assess whether amygdala activation in response to positive and negative emotional pictures changes with age. Both older and younger adults showed greater activation in the amygdala for emotional than for neutral pictures; however, for older adults, seeing positive pictures led to greater amygdala activation than seeing negative pictures, whereas this was not the case for younger adults.

Handbook of the Psychology of Aging, 2006

Oxford Handbooks Online, 2011

Effective social and emotional functioning is 1 essential to healthy relationships at any age. Al... more Effective social and emotional functioning is 1 essential to healthy relationships at any age. Although the understanding of socioemotional functioning in late life has increased in recent decades, most of the existing research relies on information reported by individuals on questionnaires or during interviews. Social neuroscience promises to uncover important and novel information that can greatly enhance this important area of research. In particular, social neuroscience is allowing tests of hypotheses that cannot be tested well using traditional behavioral methods. Throughout During the preparation of this chapter, Gregory R. Samanez-Larkin was supported by National Institute on Aging pre-doctoral NRSA AG032804 and Laura L. Carstensen was supported by National Institute on Aging MERIT award AG08816. The authors thank Mara Mather and Ben Eppinger for comments.

Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2005

As people get older, they experience fewer negative emotions. Strategic processes in older adults... more As people get older, they experience fewer negative emotions. Strategic processes in older adults' emotional attention and memory might play a role in this variation with age. Older adults show more emotionally gratifying memory distortion for past choices and autobiographical information than younger adults do. In addition, when shown stimuli that vary in affective valence, positive items account for a larger proportion of older adults' subsequent memories than those of younger adults. This positivity effect in older adults' memories seems to be due to their greater focus on emotion regulation and to be implemented by cognitive control mechanisms that enhance positive and diminish negative information. These findings suggest that both cognitive abilities and motivation contribute to older adults' improved emotion regulation.

Science, 2006

The subjective sense of future time plays an essential role in human motivation. Gradually, time ... more The subjective sense of future time plays an essential role in human motivation. Gradually, time left becomes a better predictor than chronological age for a range of cognitive, emotional, and motivational variables. Socioemotional selectivity theory maintains that constraints on time horizons shift motivational priorities in such a way that the regulation of emotional states becomes more important than other types of goals. This motivational shift occurs with age but also appears in other contexts (for example, geographical relocations, illnesses, and war) that limit subjective future time.

Psychology and Aging, 2009

Older adults' relatively better memory for positive over negative material (positivity effect) ha... more Older adults' relatively better memory for positive over negative material (positivity effect) has been widely observed in Western samples. This study examined whether a relative preference for positive over negative material is also observed in older Koreans. Younger and older Korean participants viewed images from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS), were tested for recall and recognition of the images, and rated the images for valence. Cultural differences in the valence ratings of images emerged. Once considered, the relative preference for positive over negative material in memory observed in older Koreans was indistinguishable from that observed previously in older Americans.

Psychology and Aging, 2009

A growing body of research suggests that the ability to regulate emotion remains stable or improv... more A growing body of research suggests that the ability to regulate emotion remains stable or improves across the adult life span. Socioemotional selectivity theory maintains that this pattern of findings reflects the prioritization of emotional goals. Given that goal-directed behavior requires attentional control, the present study was designed to investigate age differences in selective attention to emotional lexical stimuli under conditions of emotional interference. Both neural and behavioral measures were obtained during an experiment in which participants completed a flanker task that required them to make categorical judgments about emotional and nonemotional stimuli. Older adults showed interference in both the behavioral and neural measures on control trials but not on emotion trials. Although older adults typically show relatively high levels of interference and reduced cognitive control during nonemotional tasks, they appear to be able to successfully reduce interference during emotional tasks.

Psychology and Aging, 2005

Working memory mediates the short-term maintenance of information. Virtually all empirical resear... more Working memory mediates the short-term maintenance of information. Virtually all empirical research on working memory involves investigations of working memory for verbal and visual information. Whereas aging is typically associated with a deficit in working memory for these types of information, recent findings suggestive of relatively well-preserved long-term memory for emotional information in older adults raise questions about working memory for emotional material. This study examined age differences in working memory for emotional versus visual information. Findings demonstrate that, despite an age-related deficit for the latter, working memory for emotion was unimpaired. Further, older adults exhibited superior performance on positive relative to negative emotion trials, whereas their younger counterparts exhibited the opposite pattern.

Psychology and Aging, 2008

Older adults report less distress in response to interpersonal conflicts than do younger adults, ... more Older adults report less distress in response to interpersonal conflicts than do younger adults, yet few researchers have examined factors that may contribute to these age differences. Emotion regulation is partially determined by the initial cognitive and emotional reactions that events elicit. We examined reported thoughts and emotions of younger and older adults (N = 195) while they listened to three different audio-taped conversations in which people were ostensibly making disparaging remarks about them. At four points during each scenario, the tape paused and participants engaged in a talkaloud procedure and rated their level of anger and sadness. Findings revealed that older adults reported less anger but equal levels of sadness compared to younger adults, and their comments were judged by coders as less negative. Older adults made fewer appraisals about the people speaking on the tape and expressed less interest in learning more about their motives. Together, findings are consistent with age-related increases in processes that promote disengagement from offending situations.

Psychology and Aging, 2011

Recent evidence suggests that emotional well-being improves from early adulthood to old age. This... more Recent evidence suggests that emotional well-being improves from early adulthood to old age. This study used experience-sampling to examine the developmental course of emotional experience in a representative sample of adults spanning early to very late adulthood. Participants (N ϭ 184, Wave 1; N ϭ 191, Wave 2; N ϭ 178, Wave 3) reported their emotional states at five randomly selected times each day for a one week period. Using a measurement burst design, the one-week sampling procedure was repeated five and then ten years later. Cross-sectional and growth curve analyses indicate that aging is associated with more positive overall emotional well-being, with greater emotional stability and with more complexity (as evidenced by greater co-occurrence of positive and negative emotions). These findings remained robust after accounting for other variables that may be related to emotional experience (personality, verbal fluency, physical health, and demographic variables). Finally, emotional experience predicted mortality; controlling for age, sex, and ethnicity, individuals who experienced relatively more positive than negative emotions in everyday life were more likely to have survived over a 13 year period. Findings are discussed in the theoretical context of socioemotional selectivity theory.

Psychology and Aging, 2002

Research has shown that age and ethnicity are associated with individuals' motivations for emotio... more Research has shown that age and ethnicity are associated with individuals' motivations for emotional regulation and social interaction. The authors proposed that these age and ethnicity-related motives would be reflected in storytelling. Women representing 2 age and 2 ethnic groups (young adulthood, old age, African American, European American) told stories to young girls. Stories were coded for emotional, relational, and socialization focus. They predicted that older adults would selectively emphasize positive over negative emotions and would direct more utterances toward their interaction with their listener. The authors expected that African Americans would be more likely to emphasize socialization themes. Results suggest that older adults positively modulate emotional content while storytelling; qualified support was found for hypotheses concerning socialization and interrelational emphasis.

Psychological Science, 2003

We examined age differences in attention to and memory for faces expressing sadness, anger, and h... more We examined age differences in attention to and memory for faces expressing sadness, anger, and happiness. Participants saw a pair of faces, one emotional and one neutral, and then a dot probe that appeared in the location of one of the faces. In two experiments, older adults responded faster to the dot if it was presented on the same side as a neutral face than if it was presented on the same side as a negative face. Younger adults did not exhibit this attentional bias. Interactions of age and valence were also found for memory for the faces, with older adults remembering positive better than negative faces. These findings reveal that in their initial attention, older adults avoid negative information. This attentional bias is consistent with older adults' generally better emotional well-being and their tendency to remember negative less well than positive information.

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2003

Socioemotional selectivity theory holds that people of different ages prioritize different types ... more Socioemotional selectivity theory holds that people of different ages prioritize different types of goals. As people age and increasingly perceive time as finite, they attach greater importance to goals that are emotionally meaningful. Because the goals that people pursue so centrally influence cognition, the authors hypothesize that persuasive messages, specifically advertisements, would be preferred and better remembered by older adults when they promise to help realize emotionally meaningful goals, whereas younger adults would not show this bias. The authors also predict that modifying time perspective would reduce age differences. Findings provide qualified support for each of these predictions.