Recent aging and forecasting literature gives plausibility to the idea that changes in goal orientation, as well as errors in affective forecasting, may differ across the lifespan. Yet despite these important suggestions from the literature, little empirical research has directly compared experienced affect and affective forecasting in older and younger adults, and none has examined underlying mechanisms that may account for age differences in this domain. This project clarifies the relationship between goal orientation, emotional regulation, and affective forecasting, and explore whether this relationship is consistent with the positivity effect found in elders' retention and memory for emotional information. Specifically, three studies assess mediation of age-related affective forecasting ability by emotional regulation and goal orientation in adults between 18-90 years of age. The first two studies identify the processes in which forecasts are constructed, and test the hypothesis that if older adults tend to be more prevention-oriented than young or middle-aged adults, their forecasts may be based on the motivation to avoid incurring losses versus an orientation towards achieving gains. The third study builds upon the findings from the first two studies by examining the role of age-differences in affective criteria in the domain of temporal discounting, and will employ a query order intervention, with the purpose of reducing the influence of forecasting biases.
Affective variables play a major role in decision processes, and age differences in emotional aspects of decision making have important implications for choice outcomes. By understanding what components of affect dynamics lead adults across the lifespan to make better decisions, results will provide directions for the development of interventions that can improve the welfare of older adults.
