Socioemotional selectivity theory,research findings .pptx

Socio emotional selectivity theory

1. Socioemotional selectivity theory

2.  developed by Stanford psychologist  Laura L. Carstensen   is a life-span theory of motivation.  The theory maintains that as time horizons shrink, as they typically do with age, people become increasingly selective, investing greateresources in emotionally meaningful goals and activities.  According to the theory, motivational shifts also influence cognitive processing. Aging is associated with a relative preference for positive over negative information in individuals who have had rewarding relationships. [

3. This selective narrowing of social interaction maximizes positive emotional experiences and minimizes emotional risks as individuals become older. According to this theory, older adults systematically hone their social networks so that available social partners satisfy their emotional needs.

4. It suggests that as people age they become more selective in the goals they pursue, with older people prioritizing goals that will lead to meaning and positive emotions and younger people pursuing goals that will lead to the acquisition of knowledge.

5. The theory also focuses on the types of goals that individuals are motivated to achieve. Knowledge-related goals aim at knowledge acquisition, career planning, the development of new social relationships and other endeavors that will pay off in the future. Emotion-related goals are aimed at emotion regulation, the pursuit of emotionally gratifying interactions with social partners and other pursuits whose benefits can be realized in the present.

6. When people perceive their future as open ended, they tend to focus on future-oriented and development- or knowledge-related goals, but when they feel that time is running out and the opportunity to reap rewards from future-oriented goals' realization is dwindling, their focus tends to shift towards present-oriented and emotion- or pleasure-related goals

7. The thought of nearing “the end” leads to an increased orientation toward social and emotional targets. Here, “the end” signifies death, which is generally associated with chronological old age. However, it would be inaccurate to limit old age to chronological aging because one’s chronological age does not reveal any information about one’s health, personality, cognitive development, role in social life, and social status.

8. Thus, socioemotional selectivity theory demonstrates that the human ability to perceive time impacts motivation. Whereas the pursuit of long-term rewards makes sense when one perceives their time as expansive, when time is perceived as limited, emotionally fulfilling and meaningful goals take on new relevance. As a result, the shift in goals as time horizons change outlined by  socioemotional selectivity theory is adaptive , enabling people to focus on longer term work and family goals when they’re young and achieving emotional gratification as they get older.

9. Positivity effect in older adults Research on socioemotional selectivity theory also revealed that older adults have a bias towards positive stimuli, a phenomenon called the positivity effect. The positivity effect suggests that, in contrast to young adults, older adults tend to pay more attention to and remember positive information over negative information.

10. In perception Studies have found that older adults are more likely than younger adults to pay more attention to positive than to negative stimuli 

11. In recall The term  positivity effect  also refers to age differences in emotional attention and memory. As people get older, they experience fewer negative emotions and they tend to look to the past in a positive light.In addition, compared with younger adults' memories, older adults' memories are more likely to consist of positive than negative information and more likely to be distorted in a positive direction.

12. Research Findings There is a great deal of research support for socioemotional selectivity theory and the positivity effect. For example, in a study that examined the emotions of adults between the ages of 18 and 94 during a one-week period,  Carstensen and colleagues  found that although age wasn’t related to how often people experienced positive emotions, negative emotions declined throughout the adult lifespan until about age 60. They also found that older adults were more likely to appreciate positive emotional experiences and let go of negative emotional experiences.

13. Similarly,  research by Charles, Mather, and Carstensen  found that amongst groups of young, middle-aged, and older adults that were shown positive and negative images, the older groups recalled and remembered fewer negative images and more positive or neutral images, with the oldest group recalling the least negative images. 

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