Aging and attention: Meaningfulness may be more important than valence

Studies on socioemotional selectivity theory have found that compared with younger adults, older adults are more likely to (a) prefer to interact with emotionally close social partners and (b) show preferential cognitive processing of positive relative to negative stimuli. To integrate these 2 lines of findings, this study examined attention toward emotional (positive and negative) facial expressions of experimentally manipulated emotionally close versus nonclose targets among younger and older adults. Compared with younger adults, older adults gazed more at facial expressions of emotionally close than nonclose targets, regardless of valence. This age difference occurred to a greater extent among those who endorsed eudaimonic goals more.