Emotional Expression During Autobiographical Narratives as a Function of Aging: Support for the Socioemotional Selectivity Theory

Abstract

People communicate personal stories in very different ways. These variations in communication patterns may be affected by many variables, particularly age. Socioemotional Selectivity Theory (SST) predicts young adults are focused on information gathering to function in society, whereas older adults become increasingly motivated to regulate emotions and pursue emotionally salient yet stable goals and activities. What is not understood is whether communication patterns reflect this developmental transition. Younger and older adults (n = 120) completed negative and positive autobiographical narratives that were analyzed with a Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count Program. Results indicated that younger adults utilized more affective words in general, including more positive, negative, and anxious words during autobiographical narratives. In the positive autobiographical task, older adults used a higher percentage of “family” words, whereas in the negative autobiographical task, younger adults more frequently utilized “friend” words. In terms of pronoun use, there was evidence for increased second and third person pronouns among older adults. Results related to affective, social, and pronoun word use are largely supportive of SST. However, other important findings that were not predicted were noteworthy, including the finding that results varied as a function of narrative valence.