Thinking about a limited future enhances the positivity of younger and older adults’ recall: Support for socioemotional selectivity theory

Abstract

Compared with younger adults, older adults have a relative preference to attend to and remember positive over negative information. This is known as the “positivity effect,” and researchers have typically evoked socioemotional selectivity theory to explain it. According to socioemotional selectivity theory, as people get older they begin to perceive their time left in life as more limited. These reduced time horizons prompt older adults to prioritize achieving emotional gratification and thus exhibit increased positivity in attention and recall. Although this is the most commonly cited explanation of the positivity effect, there is currently a lack of clear experimental evidence demonstrating a link between time horizons and positivity. The goal of the current research was to address this issue. In two separate experiments, we asked participants to complete a writing activity, which directed them to think of time as being either limited or expansive (Experiments 1 and 2) or did not orient them to think about time in a particular manner (Experiment 2). Participants were then shown a series of emotional pictures, which they subsequently tried to recall. Results from both studies showed that regardless of chronological age, thinking about a limited future enhanced the relative positivity of participants’ recall. Furthermore, the results of Experiment 2 showed that this effect was not driven by changes in mood. Thus, the fact that older adults’ recall is typically more positive than younger adults’ recall may index naturally shifting time horizons and goals with age.

The positivity effect: a negativity bias in youth fades with age

“…And recently, Barber et al . [30] demonstrated that the positivity effect can be effectively produced in younger people by experimentally limiting future time horizons.…”

The Affective Neuroscience of Aging

“…Thus, manipulations of time perspective provide a cleaner way to examine if there is a relationship between time perspective and the positivity effect. Indeed, studies manipulating time perspective have shown that shifting to a more limited time perspective increases positivity in emotion perception (Kellough and Knight, 2012) and memory (Barber et al, 2015). …”

Socioemotional Selectivity Theory

“…When older adults were asked to imagine that their life span would be extended 20 additional years, for example, their social partner preference mirrored those of their younger counterparts. Conversely, when younger adults had a shortened time perspective, such as in studies where they were asked to imagine that they were moving away from their current social circle, or where asked to imagine having an illness with a poor prognosis or simply thinking about a more limited future, their partner selection and emotional experience were similar to those of healthy older adults (e.g., Barber et al 2016).…”