Beyond Stereotypes: Using Socioemotional Selectivity Theory to Improve Messaging to Older Adults

Abstract

The tremendous heterogeneity in functional and demographic characteristics of the over-65 age group presents challenges to effective marketing and public-health communications. Messages grounded on tacit assumptions that older people are frail, incompetent, and needy risk being overlooked by most of the older population; on the other hand, ignoring age-associated vulnerabilities is problematic. We argue that although traditional approaches to market segmentation based on chronological age often fail, reliable age differences in motivation influence the types of information that older people typically prefer, attend to, and remember, and these differences can be used to inform communication efforts. Socioemotional selectivity theory maintains that as future time horizons grow limited—as they typically do with age—emotional goals are prioritized over goals that focus on exploration. As time left becomes more limited, positive messages are remembered better than negative ones, and products that help people savor the moment are preferred over those that benefit the long-term future. In addition, emphasizing individual strengths and personal resilience is likely to be especially appealing to older people.

Helping Behavior of Older Adults during the Early COVID-19 Lockdown in Belgium

“…Socially and emotionally meaningful activities are often of personal interest and concern to the individual and perceived as effective contributions to society and their communities, and are therefore prioritized ( Carstensen, 1993 ; Carstensen & Hershfield, 2021 ). Such activities have been associated in previous research with older adults tending to place more emphasis on them (e.g., Dávila & Díaz-Morales, 2009 ).…”

The psychology of the internet fraud victimization of older adults: A systematic review

“…For example, people with a pleasant personality may be more likely to trust others; therefore, they are more inclined to adopt heuristic information-processing mechanisms and are thus more vulnerable to fraud. Compared to others, older adults may be more likely to trust others (Koole et al, 2001 ; Whitty, 2018 ; Carstensen and Hershfield, 2021 ). However, the relationships between older adults and trust, pleasant personality and trust, and the adopted information-processing mechanism and trust are unclear (Carter and Weber, 2010 ; Castle et al, 2012 ; Han et al, 2016 ; Shao et al, 2019 ).…”

“…To obtain sufficient samples, older adults who were defrauded long ago were also included in the scope of the investigation (Ross et al, 2014 ). However, as age increases, the memory of older adults becomes poorer, and as mentioned above, their memories of negative events might be vague (Carstensen and Hershfield, 2021 ). Therefore, future research should consider the timeliness of the memory of fraud victims.…”

The Influence of Message Framing on Elderly Tourists’ Purchase Intentions of Health Services: A Case Study of Guangxi Bama

“…This leads to a shift in priorities where knowledge acquisition is no longer the main goal and is superseded by the pursuit of emotional satisfaction [ 33 , 37 , 38 , 39 ]. This motivational change toward emotional regulation directs cognition resources [ 40 , 41 ]. Thus, the avoidance of negative emotions is common in the elderly as these are threatening to the objective of deriving meaning and satisfaction from one’s life [ 42 ] and the inclination towards positive emotions and messages is known as the positivity effect.…”