The salience of emotion across the adult life span

Abstract

Recent research on emotion has rendered equivocal traditional views of diminished emotionality in late life. This study focused on the salience of emotion in 83 Ss age 20 to 83 years. Using an incidental memory paradigm, Ss read a narrative containing equivalent amounts of emotional and neutral information. Salience was measured by the proportion of emotional versus neutral phrases recalled at the end of a 1-hr experimental session. Contrary to models of diminished emotionality, results suggest that the relative salience of emotion increases linearly with age and cohort. Results are discussed within the framework of cognitive theories of adult development and socioemotional selectivity theory.