Abstract
According to socioemotional selectivity theory (SST), aging influences information processing style depending on the time horizon perspective (THP). In detail, older adults who perceived time as limited prefer emotional to factual messages, whereas younger adults who believed time to be expansive show the opposite pattern. When individuals pursue a specific goal, they tend to process goal-relevant information in more detail, which in turn evaluates factual messages positively. We investigated the moderating effect of goal pursuit on the relationship between biological aging and persuasion in October 2016 (Experiment 1). Results showed that both older and younger adults were more favorable toward factual (vs. emotional) messages when they pursue a goal. Experiment 2, conducted in March 2017, examined whether embodied aging affects persuasion. The results indicated that younger adults with embodied aging did not show a similar persuasion pattern with actual older adults, while embodiment studies demonstrated that younger adults with embodied aging act like older adults. That means that only THP changes the angle leading to processing. In the final experiment, conducted in November 2018, younger adults primed with limited THP preferred emotional to factual messages, which was similar to actual older adults’ responses. Moreover, we showed that emotional attachment mediated the effect of message types on the persuasion of younger adults with limited THP.
Highlights
Older adults’ information-processing abilities become less detailed and begin to decline as they age, because neuron movement is reduced [1,2,3,4]
A 2 × 2 × 2 ANOVA of attitudes revealed that older participants had more favorable attitudes (M = 4.40) than younger participants (M = 4.73; F(1, 237) = 8.13, p < 0.01), that participants in the goal priming condition evaluated the advertisement more positively (Mgoal = 4.97 vs. Mcontrol = 4.15; F(1, 237) = 53.75, p < 0.001), and that there were no main effects of message type (p > 0.10)
While the results of prior research on embodied aging were affected by stereotypes about older adults [43], our results showed that some key factor depending on lifetime could not be changed
Summary
Older adults’ information-processing abilities become less detailed and begin to decline as they age, because neuron movement is reduced [1,2,3,4]. The motivation to process information differs between older and younger adults. Older adults are more motivated to maintain their current positive emotional state than to acquire new knowledge. Younger adults’ primary motivation for processing information is to obtain knowledge. Younger adults want to learn for their future, they tend to regard the acquisition of knowledge as more important than maintaining their emotional state [11,12]. This phenomenon can be explained by emotion regulation, which Gross and Thompson [13] defined as an effort to maintain one’s positive emotional state
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