What does socioemotional selectivity theory suggest will happen to the social networks of older adults?

Socioemotional Selectivity Theory

SST is another lifespan theory that helps explain the shift of personal goals and behaviors with age (Carstensen, 1991, 1995). This theory introduces the concept of future time perspective (FTP), which refers to one’s perception of time and of how much time is left; FTP can be open-ended or constrained (Rudolph, 2016). The pursuit of social goals changes as one ages; younger people view the future as more distant than older people do. Therefore, according to this theory, younger people value future investments and focus more on goals linked to knowledge acquisition, career planning, and the development of new social relationships that can potentially pay off in the future. Older people, on the other hand, are more focused on current and emotionally important relationships and goals concerning emotional regulation. Further, they are less interested in new social contacts because such contacts are less likely to provide novel knowledge. Instead, among older people, their focus shifts to goals that have emotional meaning; for example, psychological well-being.

SST has been recognized as a relevant framework in understanding and predicting work outcomes. Zacher and Frese (2009) and Zacher (2013) have adapted the initial scale developed by Carstensen and Lang (1996) to the work context by measuring Occupational Future Time Perspective (OFTP), which refers to a worker’s perception of remaining time in one’s occupational future. The theory posits that as a person becomes increasingly aware that one’s time is finite, (occupational) future time perspective decreases, and career goals and related courses of action may change. Kooij and van de Voorde (2011) found that OFTP was related to work motive outcomes. Open-ended FTP showed a positive relationship with growth motives, whereas limited FTP was related to generativity motives (e.g., sharing skills with younger coworkers).

Empirical studies have linked the construct of OFTP to work performance outcomes. Gielnik, Zacher, and Frese (2012) investigated the relationship between OFTP and small business owners’ developmental decisions regarding their company. The participants’ age had a negative indirect effect on venture growth, which was mediated by OFTP. OFTP was reflected, in part, by greater mental health. Zacher, Heusner, Schmitz, Zwierzanska, and Frese (2010) also found that OFTP was a mediator of the relationship between chronological age and peer-rated work performance. Further, this relationship varied by job complexity; specifically, as job complexity increased, the relationship between age and OFTP became smaller.

When examining the relationship between age and OCBs, it is important to consider potential antecedents of OCBs in order better to understand why older employees might engage in OCBs more so than younger employees. Wagner and Rush (2000) examined the antecedents of OCBs for older versus younger workers and found that for younger workers, factors such as job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and trust in management were significant predictors of altruistic behaviors. For them, the decision to engage in OCBs was a more conscious and deliberate decision based on the perception of fair treatment. Older employees, on the other hand, indicated moral judgment as a predictor for OCBs showing that for these workers, the decision to engage in OCBs was an affective and emotional response based on benevolence. This is consistent with SST theory, which suggests that older individuals have more emotion-based goals and value them more than future-oriented goals, such as knowledge acquisition or development (e.g., Carstensen, 1991, 1995). Therefore, the motives to engage in OCBs might differ depending on your age group: younger workers may be concerned with “If you do this for me, I can do this for you,” which is focused on reciprocity. Older workers, on the other hand, may be more guided by emotional factors, as SST would suggest.

Recently, Rudolph, Kooij, Rauvola, and Zacher (2018) conducted a meta-analyses on the relationship of age and OFTP with work outcomes. In addition, they examined the unique contribution of OFTP beyond SOC strategies in predicting work outcomes. Results indicated that as one’s age increases, one’s OFTP becomes shorter (rho = −0.55). In terms of job performance outcomes, OFTP is positively related to overall task performance (rho = 0.11) and contextual performance (rho = 0.20) as well as work engagement (rho = 0.22). In addition, similar to results from Moghimi, Zacher et al.’s (2017) meta-analysis on SOC strategy use, Rudolph, Kooij et al. (2018) found that OFTP is linked with job autonomy (rho = 0.22). Importantly, OFTP predicted specific work attitudes and job performance above and beyond SOC strategies, although effect sizes were modest to small. For job performance, age and SOC strategies account for 3.9% variance while OFTP accounts for an additional 1.3% unique variance. On the other hand, for work engagement that reflects a motivational construct, OFTP accounts for over 7% unique variance beyond age and SOC strategies.

Taken together, the recent meta-analyses of Rudolph, Kooij et al. (2018) and Moghimi et al. (2017) are a significant incremental contribution to understanding the underlying mechanisms associated with aging and linkages with work attitudes and job performance. Both SOC strategies and OFTP are involved in successful employee adaptation and performance at work over time. Although we believe that future research should examine both constructs, there should be targeted research on underlying mechanisms involved in each of the SOCcomponent strategies. All employees use SOC strategies to navigate the work and nonwork environments successfully. However, it may be that age or OFTP is associated more to specific components, for example, selection, while productive, successful employees regardless of age or OFTP use both optimization and compensation to adapt in reaction to or proactively (e.g., creatively) to work situations. Clearly, these meta-analyses will set the research agenda for years to come.

In summary, SST offers an alternative and complementary framework to understand age and work performance via the application of OFTP. Both SOC and SST elaborate on a theme that has also emerged within the performance appraisal and management research literature: the importance and role of goal-directed behavior. For SOC, older workers may more narrowly focus or target specific goals in the work place while SST indicates that older employees shift from future-oriented goals to goals that focus on more current states, including important relationships and on one’s emotional experience of those relationships. It is critical to use such gerontological concepts as a lens further to understand what we know about employee goal- directed behavior in the job performance literature, specifically, ratee or employee performance goals.

2.1 Theories in Emotional Aging

Socioemotional Selectivity Theory

Socioemotional selectivity theory, proposed by Carstensen and colleagues, refers to changes that happen across the lifespan as a function of how time is viewed (Carstensen, 1992; Carstensen, Isaacowitz, & Charles, 1999). The theory states that younger individuals perceive time as more open-ended, and thus prioritize and pursue knowledge-related goals. In contrast, older individuals perceive time as more limited, and instead prioritize emotion-related goals.

In the case of employee recruitment and selection, practitioners can consider how applicant reactions may differ across the lifespan. This issue is particularly relevant to how employers go about recruitment, because the organizational image presented can either attract or deter job seekers from joining the applicant pool. Recruiting materials emphasizing either knowledge- or emotion-related aspects of the work may have different appeal across the lifespan. Recruiters should strive to strike a balance and emphasize aspects of both the job and the company that meet both knowledge goals, such as development opportunities, and emotion- related goals, such as flexible work schedules. Of course, it is also important that the job itself is designed in such a way that both types of goals can be pursued, otherwise positive fit perceptions formed during recruitment will change once on the job.

7.10.3.1 Socioemotional Selectivity Theory

Socioemotional selectivity theory (SST) (Carstensen, 1995) focuses on two main classes of psychological goals: one comprises expansive goals, such as seeking novel knowledge or making new social connections; the second comprises emotion-related goals, such as balancing emotional states or sensing that one is needed by others. Time perspective is the proposed principal mechanism driving goal selection (Lang and Carstensen, 2002). When time is perceived as open-ended, people are more likely to pursue expansive goals for the potential long-term payoff. As people age, they recognise the inevitable constraint of time imposed by mortality. This recognition is said to facilitate a shift in their values and goals. That is, aging adults become more motivated to pursue emotionally meaningful present goals by selectively investing in contact with closer members of their social network, because the payoff is in the contact itself, not promised at some unspecified time in the future (Lang and Carstensen, 2002). This age-related motivational priority shift is therefore likely to influence encoding and retrieval of information in older adults.

Studies of age differences in attention and memory have shown that older adults have a preference for positive over negative information (Carstensen and Mikels, 2005; Mather and Carstensen, 2003; Isaacowitz et al., 2006). In a study using the dot-probe task, older adults (aged 60–94 years) were faster to respond to dot probes displayed in the location of negative faces relative to neutral faces, but slower to detect dot probes displayed in the location of negative faces relative to neutral faces. By contrast, these attentional biases were not observed in younger adults (aged 18–35 years) (Mather and Carstensen, 2003). To date, there is no strong evidence suggesting that age differences in the f detection of threatening information reflects a decline in older adults' ability to detect threatening information quickly; rather, age-related attentional differences may be specific and motivated (Isaacowitz et al., 2006).

There is also mounting evidence that, relative to younger adults, older adults recall more positive than negative information in working memory (Mikels et al., 2005), long-term memory (Charles et al., 2003; Mather and Knight, 2005), and autobiographical memory (Ready et al., 2007). Interestingly, research has reported that this age difference can be eliminated by explicit processing of both positive and negative information, in which case both older and younger adults show positivity biases (for a review, see Reed and Carstensen, 2012).

A meta-analysis of 100 empirical studies examining the age-related positivity effect in attention and memory found that this effect is reliable (Reed et al., 2014), and appears to be moderated by experimental constraints on information processing. That is, the positivity effect is larger in studies that do not constrain cognitive processing through instructional manipulations and/or task-related restrictions (Ready et al., 2007, Study 2, Charles et al., 2003, Study 1), and weakest among studies with such constraints (e.g., Werheid et al., 2010, Study 2), reflecting older adults' natural information processing preferences. In addition, older adults show a significant information processing bias toward positive versus negative information, whereas younger adults show the opposite pattern (Reed et al., 2014). Taken together, these finding provide support for the motivational perspective on the positivity effect offered by the SST account, and that older adults may be more likely to disengage from negative stimuli to minimise negative affect relative to younger adults (Charles, 2010).

Socioemotional Selectivity Theory

Socioemotional selectivity theory (Carstensen et al., 2003; Carstensen et al., 1999), a dominant theory in the study of emotion and aging, argues that people prioritize different kinds of goals as they perceive future time differently. When time horizons are perceived as long and open-ended (e.g., as in younger adulthood), people are more motivated to pursue knowledge-related goals such as gaining new experiences and information, and expanding social networks, so as to bank for their long-term future. Conversely, when people perceive future time horizons as shorter and more limited, they prioritize emotionally meaningful goals by savoring the present, investing in sure things, and choosing to deepen close relationships rather than seeking new connections (Carstensen et al., 1999). In other words, older adults may maintain their emotional well-being by selectively pursuing emotionally meaningful goals and downplaying knowledge-related goals as they perceive their future time as increasingly limited. Such a shift in goals has impacts on value, preference, and decision making (for a review, see Carstensen, 2006). For example, compared with younger adults, older adults prefer to interact with emotionally close partners over peripheral social partners (Fredrickson & Carstensen, 1990; Fung, Carstensen, & Lutz, 1999). They even proactively drop peripheral social partners from their social networks to increase the emotional density of the networks (Lang & Carstensen, 2002). They are also more likely to forgive others in interpersonal conflicts (Allemand, 2008). These strategies of situational selection and modulation enable older adults to focus their limited time and energy on social partners and interactions that are likely to be pleasant, contributing to their emotional well-being.

Importantly, socioemotional selectivity theory argues that changing future time perspective can modify or even reverse these age-related differences in goals, suggesting that these age differences are indeed strategies rather than anything that is static or inherent about aging (e.g., Carstensen & Fredrickson, 1998; Fredrickson & Carstensen, 1990; Fung et al., 1999; Fung, Lai, & Ng, 2001; Lang & Carstensen, 2002). Age differences in goal prioritization disappeared when future time perspective was naturalistically shifted (e.g., after younger adults experience life events that are associated with limited future time). For example, Fung and Carstensen (2006) found that social events that primed people of the finitude of life (e.g., September 11 and the SARS epidemic among Hong Kong Chinese) shifted even younger adults to focus on emotionally meaningful goals and to prefer to interact with emotionally close social partners. Moreover, Fung et al. (2001) tested social preferences among age-matched Chinese in Taiwan and Mainland China. They found that Chinese in Mainland China, a group with shorter life expectancy (in other words, with a naturalistically more limited future time perspective), preferred to interact with emotionally close social partners more so than did Chinese in Taiwan, a group with life expectancy that was 7 years longer.

In addition to these studies using naturalistic situations, other studies experimentally manipulated individuals’ future time perspective and obtained similar findings. Fung et al. (1999) manipulated participants’ future time perspective by telling them that they would either “enjoy 20 years of additional healthy life” (time-expanded condition) or “emigrate to another country in a few weeks” (time-limited condition). These primes shifted future time perspective and thus goal preferences. In the condition without manipulation, older adults were more likely to prefer spending time with emotionally close social partners than did younger adults. These age differences disappeared in the time-limited condition, when younger adults increased their preferences for emotionally close social partners to the same level as older adults, such that both age groups now preferred emotionally close social partners. Conversely, in the time-expanded condition, older adults decreased their preferences for emotionally close social partners, such that neither age group now preferred emotionally close social partners. All of these findings suggest that limited future time motivates people to pursue emotionally meaningful goals, leading to their focus on emotionally close social partners. Such social partners are more likely to provide them with positive, or at least predictable, social interactions, enabling them to maintain positive emotions.

Theoretical Perspectives

Socioemotional Selectivity Theory. Socioe­mo­tional selectivity theory has been used to guide research on individual, intrapsychic characteristics that lead to productive behaviors (e.g., Hendricks & Cutler, 2004; Okun & Schultz, 2003). According to socioemotional selectivity theory, people in later life – who typically view time as more limited than endless – are oriented to goals, activities, and relationships that are most emotionally meaningful and relevant to their own identity (Carstensen, Isaacowitz, & Charles, 1999). Accordingly, this theory suggests that individuals who perceive productive activities as familiar, personally meaningful, and emotionally salient are most likely to engage in them. As an example of a study guided by this perspective, Hendricks and Cutler (2004) used US national data to test the hypothesis that older people will remain stable in their number of hours volunteering for their main organization, even though their number of volunteer hours to all organizations might decrease. Results generally supported this prediction, with older adults volunteering for fewer organizations, yet dedicating the same amount, if not more time, to the organizations for which they volunteered.

Social, Human, and Cultural Capital. Drawing on classic economic theory, the concept of capital has been developed within the social sciences to identify other forms of “value added” beyond financial markets. As a central theoretical construct, social capital addresses the yield when people, groups, and social institutions relate to each other in particular ways (Coleman, 1988). Social capital can be specific to individuals (e.g., an individual’s private network of contacts to help them find a job) and also can exist at a community level (e.g., norms of trust within a neighborhood). Human capital addresses resources rooted within individuals, such as skills, knowledge, and functional ability (Coleman, 1988), whereas cultural capital indicates shared symbolic meanings, values, and ways of relating to others that advance one’s position in status hierarchies (Lamont & Lareau, 1988). As an example of a study guided by this perspective, McNamara and Gonzales (2011) used US national survey data and found that human capital (e.g., greater education and assets), social capital (e.g., having a spouse who volunteers), and cultural capital (e.g., greater religiosity) were associated with volunteer engagement over time.

Life Course Perspective. The life course perspective focuses, in part, on patterns of continuity and change within major life domains, such as work, leisure, and family, that extend across long periods in people’s lives; the perspective also addresses how these patterns are embedded within broader social contexts, including sociohistorical time and social positions (Elder, 1998). Researchers have applied concepts from this perspective to examine a variety of factors that potentially influence older adults’ productive activity (e.g., Hirshorn & Settersten, 2013; Moen & Flood, 2013). Such concepts include: timing (e.g., how the timing of one’s retirement influences volunteer activity), personal biography (e.g., how productive engagement at earlier phases of life influences engagement later in life), linked lives (e.g., how a younger family member’s need for financial assistance leads to older adults continuing to work), and cohort (e.g., the expectation that Baby Boomers will have high rates of volunteerism in later life). As an example, Szinovacz and DeViney (2000) drew upon several principles from the life course perspective in their examination of how marital characteristics influence labor force withdrawal among adults in middle and later life. One such principle addressed how people’s experiences in one life sphere, such as work, are likely influenced by those in others, such as family. Consistent with this perspective, the researchers found some evidence that marital partners adjust their work status according to each other’s benefit eligibility, income, and health status, with patterns varying by gender.

Critical Perspectives. Critical perspectives focus on society as a whole, “concerned not merely with how things were but how they might be and should be” (Bronner, 2011, pp. 1–2). Critical perspectives are especially attuned to social inequalities in people’s life choices and circumstances that result from larger political and economic contexts. Critical perspectives on productive activity suggest that social disparities among older adults – such as by gender, age, race, class, and disability – make some types of productive activity more celebrated and accessible to older adults than others (Martinson & Minkler, 2006). Critical gerontology also addresses ways in which major social institutions, such as the shrinking role of the federal government in providing benefits for older adults, reinforce social norms that expect older adults to engage in productive activity (Holstein, 1999). A study of retirement among women by Zimmerman, Mitchell, Wister, and Gutman (2000) demonstrates the application of critical perspectives in examining women’s participation in the paid labor force. Oriented to gender as a social structure that provides unequal opportunities for role participation across the life course, the study found that family caregiving was associated with earlier retirement.

7.04.2.2 Socioemotional Selectivity Theory

Socioemotional selectivity theory (SST; Carstensen, 1995; Carstensen et al., 1999) is based on and derived from Baltes' Selection, Optimization and Compensation Model (SOC: Baltes, 1997; Baltes et al., 2006). According to SST, people make active choices about the number and closeness of relationships in which they would like to invest, and older adults become more selective in choosing their social network members due to shifts in motivation (English and Carstensen, 2014). These shifts in social relations are driven, in part, by perceptions of time rather than age per se. SST is fundamentally a lifespan theory which takes into account different life goals at different points in the lifespan (Carstensen et al., 1999). Younger people are motivated to reach out and explore the world, in part, due to having more expansive time horizons (i.e., open-ended). Thus, younger adults strive for more knowledge-focused goals (i.e., achievement, accumulating information, etc.) to gain more independence from their family of origin and seek new connections as they seek to discover their place in the world. As individuals get older, SST argues people perceive their time left to live as more limited. With age, people become less interested in exploring new relationships but rather focus on relationships they already have that are more emotionally meaningful. With this goal dominating the basis of their social relationships, people begin to reduce the number of relationships in which they are invested in order to devote more of their remaining time to their close relationships, which become increasingly significant to them.

In an early empirical examination of SST, three cohorts of nationally representative samples were examined. Across all three cohorts, younger people reported wanting to increase the number of social relations (e.g., friends) while older people felt they had enough friends and were quite satisfied with the current size of their social networks (Lansford et al., 1998). Experimental data are also supportive. For example, in a cross-sectional study (Fredrickson and Carstensen, 1990) investigating social partner selection, individuals were asked who they would spend half an hour of free time with: a member of their immediate family (familiar social partner), a recent acquaintance they have a lot in common with (novel social partner) or an author of a book they read (novel social partner). When asked in the unspecified condition, older adults showed greater preference for familiar social partners compared with younger adults. In contrast, in a condition in which participants were told to imagine they were moving across the country by themselves (i.e., a salient ending condition), younger adults showed similar social preferences to older adults (Study 2; Fredrickson and Carstensen, 1990). In another study, using the same paradigm as the previous study (Fredrickson and Carstensen, 1990), researchers examined social partner selection in Hong Kong before, right after and 4 months after the September 11th terrorist attacks (Study 1; Fung and Carstensen, 2006). Before September 11th, younger people were less likely to select familiar social partners than older people. Right after 9/11, however, age differences were no longer present such that both younger and older individuals showed a preference towards familiar social partners. Four months after 9/11, age differences reemerged, showing a greater preference of familiar social partners at older ages (Study 1; Fung and Carstensen, 2006). Further, in a longitudinal study, social partner selection was examined in Hong Kong during the peak of the SARS epidemic and right after it subsided. During the SARS epidemic, no age differences in social partner selection emerged, however, after the SARS epidemic, younger ages were less likely to select familiar social partners compared with older ages (Study 2; Fung and Carstensen, 2006).

Overall, SST highlights the role of motivation, life goals, and context (i.e., perceptions of time left and/or the finitude of life) which influence social relationship preferences. That is, older individuals tend to be more likely to prefer familiar social partners, which may reflect a shift from knowledge-focused goals to emotion-focused goals due to changing perceptions of time horizons. Prior research has shown that age is a good predictor of time perception such that older adults show more limited future time perspectives than younger adults (Lang and Carstensen, 2002). However, life events and experimental manipulations can also reduce time horizons (e.g., Fredrickson and Carstensen, 1990; Fung and Carstensen, 2006) and thus, shifts in motivation and social preferences may occur at any life stage. Overall, SST argues that close social relationships become more, not less, important as people age, which may be driven by motivational changes in goals. At the same time and perhaps because of this, people become more selective about their relationships. They prefer to invest what they perceive to be their limited remaining time in relationships that are most important to them.

7.03.4.1 Socioemotional Selectivity Theory: Emotion Regulation in Late Life

According to socioemotional selectivity theory (Carstensen, 1987,1991,1992,1993a), basic functions of social interaction, such as regulating desired emotional states and acquiring knowledge about oneself or the world, differ in respect to their relative importance for determining social preferences across the life span. For example, Carstensen (1993a) argues that emotional regulation becomes more important in old age because a more limited future alters the likelihood that long-term goals will be achieved. Hence, emphasis is shifted to achieving short-term goals in the immediate social context that are mostly emotional rather than informational.

Socioemotional selectivity theory provides a theoretical framework in which most of the above-mentioned empirical findings on age-related changes and health-related functions of social relationships can be considered. Older people narrow the breadth of their social lives and social participation in order to intensify their engagement in a narrow range of social functions, focusing on close emotional relationships with peers as well as with younger social partners from whom they derive a sense of meaning in life. Reduced social contact in late life, according to this model, reflects the older individual's changed needs and motivations. Indeed, the profile of empirical findings reviewed suggests that it is not the frequency of social interaction or the number of network partners but rather the quality, emotional meaningfulness, and functional adequacy of enduring close ties that contribute to well-being in late life (Beckman, 1981; Ishii-Kuntz, 1990; Lee & Markides, 1990; Lowenthal & Haven, 1968; Rook, 1984).

Time Preferences

Finally, socioemotional selectivity theory suggests that in old age, when time is perceived as limited, short-term benefits should become relatively more important (Lang & Carstensen, 2002). In terms of time preferences, it implies that older adults will value future money relatively less and, thus, would show a relative preference for a smaller immediate reward over a larger later reward. Economic theory and results thus far are mostly consistent with this suggestion (Lee et al., 2008; Read & Read, 2004; Sozou & Seymour, 2003; Trostel & Taylor, 2001). A simpler explanation is that older adults may perceive the likelihood of cashing in later as being lower due to shorter expected life span or shorter expected healthy life span. Although the short time spans used in most of these studies makes this explanation somewhat less tenable, we could say with greater assurance that the effect was due to chronically activated emotional goals if such effects were shown by older adults more for affective options over less affective options.

Age-related changes in motivation

According to socioemotional selectivity theory (Carstensen, Isaacowitz, & Charles, 1999), individuals who perceive reduced time to live may be motivated to prioritize meaningful goals and subsequently improve well-being. This greater sense of meaning in life, compared to middle and young adults (Steger, Oishi, & Kashdan, 2009), may change an older adult’s perspective, reducing the likelihood of focusing on minor stressors (Aldwin et al. 1996), facilitating greater use of adaptive coping in later life (Park, 2010), and in general focusing more on positive aspects and memories (Reed & Carstensen, 2012; Reed, Chan, & Mikels, 2014).

Others have suggested that age-related changes in motivation facilitate a shift from what Schulz and Heckhausen (1996) have called primary (problem-focused) coping to secondary (emotion-focused) coping. The theory holds that older adults face less control over the environment and thus shift control to their own internal responses. However, studies of the development of emotion regulation in childhood have shown that emotion regulation is often necessary for the development of effective problem-solving skills, and early work by Folkman and Lazarus (1980) showed that adults use both problem- and emotion-focused coping in nearly 90% of all stress episodes. Further, both types of coping decrease with age (Aldwin, 2007). More recent versions of this theory acknowledge the coordination of primary and secondary control processes to achieve goals and address compensatory secondary control, in which goals are shifted to accommodate decreases in resources (Heckhausen, Wrosch, & Schulz, 2010).

A similar theory has been proposed by Brandtstȁdter & Rothermund (2002). In this dual process model, assimilativeprocesses are oriented toward shaping one’s life to maximize the achievement of personal goals, while accommodation processes involve the adjustment of goals to acknowledge limited resources. A longitudinal study showed that individuals who shift to accommodation processes in late life are more satisfied with their lives (Rothermund & Brandstädter, 2003). Later versions of this theory have revised this to argue that extrinsic-instrumental goals yield in late life to ego-transcendent goals, in part as a recognition of one’s own mortality (Brandtstädter et al., 2010). This shift is also in accordance with current theories of wisdom development (Aldwin et al., 2019).