Socioemotional Selectivity Theory

Socioemotional selectivity theory, developed by the Stanford psychologist Laura L. Carstensen, is a life-span theory of motivation maintaining that as time horizons shrink, as they typically do with age, people become increasingly selective, investing greater resources in emotionally meaningful goals and activities. Aging is associated with a relative preference for positive over negative information among individuals who have had rewarding relationships, a selective narrowing of social interaction that maximizes positive emotional experiences and minimizes emotional risks; the theory holds that the cause of these goal shifts is not age itself but an age-associated shift in time perspective, with knowledge-related goals giving way to emotion-related ones as people perceive less time remaining. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/