Abstract
Abstract Socioemotional selectivity theory (SST), an influential life-span theory, suggests that older adults prefer persuasive messages that appeal to emotionally-meaningful goals over messages that appeal to knowledge-related goals, whereas younger adults do not show this preference. A mixed-factorial experiment was conducted to test whether older adults (≥65 years) differ from younger adults (25–45 years) in their preference for emotionally-meaningful appeals over knowledge-related appeals, when appeals are clearly developed in line with SST. For older adults we found the expected preference for emotionally-meaningful appeals for cancer centers but not for grocery stores and travel organizations. As expected, in most cases, younger adults did not show a preference. Implications for SST-based communication research and for practice are discussed.
Highlights
Socioemotional selectivity theory (SST) (e.g., Carstensen, Isaacowitz, and Charles, 1999), an influential life-span theory, outlines how the relative importance of goals changes as people age
Using SST, several scholars hypothesized that these age-related changes in goal hierarchy imply that older adults prefer persuasive messages that appeal to emotionally-meaningful goals over messages that appeal to knowledge-related goals, whereas younger adults do not show this preference (Drolet, Williams, and Lau-Gesk, 2007; Fung and Carstensen, 2003; Sudbury-Riley and Edgar, 2016; van der Goot, van Reijmersdal, and Kleemans, 2015b; Williams and Drolet, 2005)
Related to the three organization types used for our stimulus material, younger and older adults did not differ in their perceived relevance of grocery stores: F(1, 433) = 0.19, p = .660, ηp2 = .00; cancer centers: F(1, 433) = 1.00, p = .317, ηp2 = .00; and travel organizations: F(1, 433) = 0.04, p = .838, ηp2 =
Summary
Socioemotional selectivity theory (SST) (e.g., Carstensen, Isaacowitz, and Charles, 1999), an influential life-span theory, outlines how the relative importance of goals changes as people age. Using SST, several scholars hypothesized that these age-related changes in goal hierarchy imply that older adults prefer persuasive messages that appeal to emotionally-meaningful goals over messages that appeal to knowledge-related goals, whereas younger adults do not show this preference (Drolet, Williams, and Lau-Gesk, 2007; Fung and Carstensen, 2003; Sudbury-Riley and Edgar, 2016; van der Goot, van Reijmersdal, and Kleemans, 2015b; Williams and Drolet, 2005). These studies showed mixed findings regarding the age differences, potentially because the studies differed in how they defined and operationalized the appeals. The study deepens our theoretical and empirical understanding of how changes in goal setting across the life span have consequences for responses to persuasive messages that appeal to these goals
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