The Role of Goals: Age and Cultural Differences in Affective Responses to a Negative Social Interaction

Age differences in motivational goals have been invoked to explain why older adults regulate their emotions more effectively in response to negative social interactions. Because much of the literature has been based primarily on European Americans, the present studies examined both age and cultural differences in goals and affective responses to a negative social interaction.;Studies 1 and 2 were part of a larger study of 159 younger and older European Americans and Chinese Americans. After taking affective and physiological baseline assessments, the participants discussed their answers to hypothetical dilemmas with a confederate for twenty minutes. Immediately afterwards, participants reported their positive and negative affect, goals, and coping responses endorsed during the task. At the end of the session, participants reported their positive and negative affect as a measure of recovery. One week later, participants reported their memory for the emotions they experienced during the task.;Study 1 examined whether goals and coping strategies explained age differences in immediate affective and physiological responses to the social interaction. Older adults were more likely to endorse task mastery goals and younger adults were more likely to endorse goals to change the confederate. Older adults exhibited less negative affective reactivity and less diastolic blood pressure and heart rate reactivity than younger adults. Older adults also showed steeper positive and negative affect recovery than younger adults. Older adults' greater endorsement of task mastery goals partially explained age differences in levels of positive affect recovery.;Study 2 examined culture and age differences in discrepancies between ideal and actual affect as well as memory for emotions during a negative social interaction. European Americans had larger discrepancies between their ideal and actual positive affect as well as more positively-biased emotional memories than Chinese Americans. This effect was qualified by age: younger European Americans recalled experiencing more positive affect and older European Americans recalled experiencing less negative affect than was originally reported. Discrepancies in ideal and actual positive affect partially explained cultural differences in positively-biased emotional memories. Moreover, discrepancies between ideal and actual negative affect predicted positively-biased emotional memories for European Americans, but not Chinese Americans.