Choosing social partners: how old age and anticipated endings make people more selective

Carstensen's selectivity theory, which explains age-related change in social behavior in terms of emotion conservation and increasing discrimination among social partners, was investigated in 2 studies. In Study 1, 80 people aged 14 to 95 classified descriptions of people according to their similarities as social partners in terms of affect anticipated in the interaction and that this dimension was most important to older people. Study 2 showed how anticipated social endings influence partner selection: 380 people aged 11 to 92 chose familiar or novel partners under unspecified and ending conditions. Overall, older people chose familiar partners most frequently; yet when social endings were salient, younger people patterned the preferences of the elderly. These results suggest that social partner selectivity functions to conserve emotion resources in the face of limited future opportunities.