SOCIOEMOTIONAL FUNCTIONING IN ADULTHOOD AND OLD AGE

这项相互竞争的续展申请的目的是继续1990年进行的一系列方案研究，试图了解成年和老年社会动机的年龄差异。最初促使这项调查的行为现象是，与年龄相关的可靠的老年社交减少和社交互动。当时，“关注”一词最好地描述了社会和研究对这一现象的反应。该领域的普遍共识是，观察到的社会接触减少与对身心健康的有害后果有关。美国几乎每个城市都建立了老年中心，开展了旨在吸引老年人的干预行动，旨在记录老年情绪困扰性质的研究也在全力进行。然而，在过去的十年里，这个实验室的发现促成了一篇虽小但不断增长的文献，它清楚地表明，老年人在情感上并没有受到社交联系减少的影响。相反，情绪功能至少在老年时会得到很好的维持，而且可能会有所改善。与年轻人相比，老年人在日常生活中更注重情感，更喜欢情感上亲密的社交伙伴，通过自我报告更好地调节自己的情绪。然而，除了这些具有挑衅性的发现之外，我们在晚年对情绪的了解比生活中的任何时候都要少。本文提出了五项关于情绪的研究。三人研究了潜在的互补的认知和生物机制，这些机制可能在改善情绪功能方面发挥作用。第四项研究涉及第三波数据收集，采用纵向序列设计，以日常生活中情绪的经验采样为基础。第五项研究建议将对情感偏好的调查从社会关系扩展到消费者行为，方法是检查人们对情绪化与非情绪化广告的相对偏好。情感是目标导向行为的核心，如果社会要利用老龄化人口的潜力，并在必要时进行有效干预，了解老年人的动机显然是先决条件。

The aim of this competing renewal application is to continue a programmatic line of research undertaken in 1990 that seeks to understand age differences in social motivation in adulthood and old age. The behavioral phenomenon that originally prompted this investigation was the reliable age-related reduction in social contact and social interaction in old age. At that time, "concern" best described the societal and research response to the phenomenon. General consensus in the field was that observed reductions in social contact were associated with deleterious consequences for physical and mental health. Senior centers were established in virtually every American city, intervention efforts aimed at drawing out older people were undertaken, and studies aimed at documenting the nature of emotional distress in old age were in full force. Over the past ten years, however, findings from this laboratory have contributed to a small but growing literature that shows clearly that older people are not suffering emotionally from a reduction in social contact. On the contrary, emotional functioning is at least well maintained in old age, and possibly improves. Compared to their younger counterparts, older people pay greater attention to emotion in everyday life, prefer emotionally close social partners and, by self-report, regulate their emotions better. Yet, beyond these provocative findings, we know less about emotion in old age than any other time in life. Five studies of emotion are proposed. Three examine potentially complementary cognitive and biological mechanisms that may play a role in improved emotion functioning. A fourth study involves a third wave of data collection in a longitudinal sequence design based on an experience sampling of emotions in everyday life. The fifth study proposes to extend investigation of emotional preferences from social relations to consumer behavior by examining relative preferences for advertisements that are couched in emotional versus non-emotional terms. Emotion is at the core of goal directed behavior and if society is to harness the potential of the aging population, and to intervene where necessary with effective interventions, understanding what motivates older people is clearly prerequisite.