Age differences in social affective forecasting.

Abstract

Almost all prior literature on affective forecasting in older age has focused exclusively on discrete outcomes in nonsocial contexts (such as winning monetary rewards) and not a single study to date has examined age-related differences in affective forecasting in social contexts. Because close social relationships are prioritized as people age, the present study was designed to provide the first test of how younger and older adults forecast their emotions when anticipating an interaction with a real social partner. We recruited younger and older adults and asked them to forecast their positive and negative emotions in response to a brief face-to-face interaction with a social partner (female confederate) before reporting their actual experienced emotions after the interaction. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two conditions in which they were either primed to perceive closeness with their conversation partner or not. Overall, older adults predicted and experienced more positive and less negative emotions relative to their younger counterparts. However, no other age effects emerged. Both age groups overestimated their negative and underanticipated their positive future emotions to a similar degree (although this latter effect was stronger in the perceived closeness vs. control condition). These findings offer support for the hypothesis that normative shifts in goal orientation and affective experience associated with aging may influence the valence of forecasted and experienced emotion and, importantly, demonstrate that affective forecasting accuracy is not negatively impacted by age. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).