Penningroth Suzanna L, Scott Walter D
Department of Psychology, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY 82071, USA.
Int J Aging Hum Dev. 2012;74(2):87-111. doi: 10.2190/AG.74.2.a.
Two prominent theories of lifespan development, socioemotional selectivity theory and selection, optimization, and compensation theory, make similar predictions for differences in the goal representations of younger and older adults. Our purpose was to test whether the goals of younger and older adults differed in ways predicted by these two theories. Older adults and two groups of younger adults (college students and non-students) listed their current goals, which were then coded by independent raters. Observed age group differences in goals generally supported both theories. Specifically, when compared to younger adults, older adults reported more goals focused on maintenance/loss prevention, the present, emotion-focus and generativity, and social selection, and less goals focused on knowledge acquisition and the future. However, contrary to prediction, older adults also showed less goal focusing than younger adults, reporting goals from a broader set of life domains (e.g., health, property/possessions, friendship).
寿命发展的两个著名理论，即社会情感选择性理论和选择、优化与补偿理论，对年轻人和老年人目标表征的差异做出了相似的预测。我们的目的是检验年轻人和老年人的目标是否如这两个理论所预测的那样存在差异。老年人以及两组年轻人（大学生和非大学生）列出了他们当前的目标，然后由独立评分者进行编码。观察到的不同年龄组在目标上的差异总体上支持了这两个理论。具体而言，与年轻人相比，老年人报告的更多目标集中在维持/防止损失、当下、情感聚焦和繁衍以及社会选择上，而较少目标集中在知识获取和未来上。然而，与预测相反的是，老年人的目标聚焦程度也低于年轻人，他们报告的目标来自更广泛的生活领域（如健康、财产/财物、友谊）。
