SOCIOEMOTIONAL FUNCTIONING IN ADULTHOOD AND OLD AGE

这项竞争性更新申请的目的是继续1990年开展的一项纲领性研究，旨在了解成年期和老年期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社会接触和社会互动的减少。当时，“关注”一词最能描述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。几乎每个美国城市都建立了老年中心，旨在吸引老年人的干预措施得到了实施，旨在记录老年人情绪困扰本质的研究也全面展开。然而，在过去的十年里，这个实验室的研究成果为一个规模虽小但不断增长的文献做出了贡献，这些文献清楚地表明，老年人并没有因为社交接触的减少而在情感上受到影响。相反，情绪功能至少在老年时保持得很好，并可能有所改善。与年轻人相比，老年人在日常生活中更加关注情绪，更喜欢情感上亲密的社会伙伴，并且根据自我报告，他们更能调节自己的情绪。然而，除了这些令人激动的发现之外，我们对老年情绪的了解比生命中任何时候都要少。提出了五项情绪研究。其中三个研究了可能在改善情绪功能中发挥作用的潜在互补的认知和生物机制。第四项研究涉及第三波数据收集，以纵向序列设计为基础，对日常生活中的情绪进行经验抽样。第五项研究建议将情感偏好的调查从社会关系扩展到消费者行为，通过检查对以情感与非情感术语表达的广告的相对偏好。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.