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Psychol Aging. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2017 September 01. Published in final edited form as: Psychol Aging. 2016 September ; 31(6): 594–604. doi:10.1037/pag0000104.
Time Perspective and Social Preference in Older and Younger Adults: Effects of Self-Regulatory Fatigue Suzanne C. Segerstrom, Paul J. Geiger, Hannah L. Combs, and Ian A. Boggero Department of Psychology, University of Kentucky
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Socioemotional selectivity theory predicts that when perceived time in life is limited, people will prefer emotionally close social partners over less emotionally rewarding partners. Regulating social choices with regard to time perspective can make the best use of time with regard to wellbeing. However, doing so may depend on the self-regulatory capacity of the individual. Two studies, one with younger adults (N = 101) and one with younger (N = 42) and older (N = 39) adults, experimentally tested the effects of time perspective and self-regulatory fatigue on preferences for emotionally close partners and knowledgeable partners. In both studies and across younger and older adults, when self-regulatory fatigue was low, the perception of limited time resulted in a greater preference for close social partners relative to knowledgeable social partners. However, this shift was eliminated by self-regulatory fatigue. In Study 2, when fatigued, younger adults preferred close social partners to knowledgeable partners across time perspectives; older adults preferred close and knowledgeable partners more equally across time perspectives. These findings have implications for social decision-making and satisfaction among people who experience chronic self-regulatory fatigue. They also contradict previous suggestions that only younger adults are susceptible to self-regulatory fatigue.
Keywords self-regulation; ego depletion; socioemotional selectivity; social choice; aging
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Changes in time perspective affect social preferences: When future time is perceived as limited (e.g., as a consequence of aging or disease), emotionally close social partners, such as family members, are preferred over other desirable but less emotionally rewarding partners, such as admired authors (Fredrickson & Carstensen, 1990; Fung, Carstensen, & Lutz, 1999). These preferences are predicted by socioemotional selectivity theory (SST; Carstensen, Isaacowitz, & Charles, 1999), which posits that perception of limited future time leads to preferences for activities, people, and goals that provide short-term, hedonic value (e.g., social and emotional well-being) over those that provide long-term, functional value (e.g., knowledge and information).
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Suzanne C. Segerstrom, Department of Psychology, University of Kentucky, 125 Kastle Hall, Lexington, KY 40506-0044. [email protected].
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Beginning in middle adulthood and continuing through old age, contact and satisfaction with acquaintances decreases and contact and satisfaction with close friends and family members increases, consistent with SST (Bond, Thompson, & Malloy, 2005; Carstensen, 1992; Doherty & Feeney, 2004; Fung, Carstensen, & Lang, 2001; Lang & Carstensen, 1994). The effect is robust when controlling for health and for age of social network members, suggesting that social network change with older age is likely to be a matter of motivated choice rather than functional limitations. Supporting this suggestion, older age correlated with greater desire to spend time with family members and lesser desire to spend time with other social partners; these desires correlated with actual network characteristics (Lang & Carstensen, 2002).
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Regulating social choices to align with time perspective can make the best use of available time with regard to well-being. In a lifespan sample, preference for different kinds of social partners predicted social well-being (Lang & Carstensen, 2002). Higher preference for family members was associated with higher social satisfaction for all age groups. However, higher preference for “knowledgeable partners” (e.g., author, artist) was associated with higher social strain, particular among older adults. Among women with metastatic breast cancer (M age = 57 years), goals consistent with limited future time, including spending time with close social partners, were associated with better psychological adjustment than goals consistent with expansive future time, including spending time with distant social partners (Sullivan-Singh, Stanton, & Low, 2015). Social preferences that favor emotionally close others contribute to older adults’ goal of maximizing social and emotional well-being.
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However, some individuals make social choices that do not maximize well-being (Lang & Carstensen, 2002). The purpose of the present studies was to test whether such choices might be due to deficits in self-regulatory capacity. Because age-related social preferences reflect top-down motivational processes, they are likely to be contingent on the availability of cognitive resources. For example, aligning social choices with time perspective may require attention to time cues and holding such cues in working memory while deciding among social partners, rather than making impulsive or unconsidered decisions. The resources required in decision-making can be captured under the umbrella of self-regulation, defined as deliberative control over thoughts, emotions, behaviors, and impulses.
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Self-regulatory capacity can be chronically or acutely fatigued, resulting in poor selfregulatory performance (Hagger, Wood, Stiff & Chatzisarantis, 2010; Solberg Nes, Carlson, Crofford, De Leeuw, & Segerstrom, 2010). For example, after people perform a task requiring self-regulation, performance on a subsequent self-regulatory task suffers (Hagger et al., 2010). Some such studies have examined whether self-regulation is involved in decision-making, concluding that decision-making does rely on self-regulatory capacity. Experimental induction of self-regulatory fatigue resulted in decision-making (among consumer goods or hypothetical jobs) that was more intuitive and less deliberative (Pocheptsova, Amir, Dhar, & Baumeister, 2009). Conversely, simply deciding among options for consumer goods or college courses apparently used self-regulatory capacity in that the result was self-regulatory fatigue (lower persistence and performance on a subsequent self-regulatory task; Vohs et al., 2008; Wang, Novemsky, Dhar, & Baumeister, 2010). If decision-making relies on self-regulatory capacity, when individuals experience
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self-regulatory fatigue, they may make social choices that are not well regulated with regard to time perspective. However, no research to our knowledge has examined effects of selfregulatory fatigue on decisions among social partners.
The present studies
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The present studies tested whether experimentally induced self-regulatory fatigue affected social choices as predicted by SST in younger (Studies 1 and 2) and older (Study 2) adults. These studies employed manipulations of time perspective in which participants were asked to imagine circumstances that limited future time (Studies 1 and 2) or extended future time (Study 2). Under conditions of low self-regulatory fatigue, we predicted that perception of limited future time would decrease preference for knowledgeable social partners and increase preference for emotionally close social partners, whereas perception of extended future time would have the opposite effect. Under conditions of high self-regulatory fatigue, these changes should be blunted or abolished, because participants who have previously been fatigued make less regulated choices among these desirable social partners than those who have not. This failure to regulate might occur because of reduced ability to attend to time perspective in making social decisions or because fatigue causes people to revert to their typical, automatic, or overlearned social decisions (which might vary between younger and older adults.)
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We further predicted that self-regulatory fatigue would not affect preferences for undesirable partners. Choosing between desirable and undesirable social partners should not require selfregulation, as these choices can be characterized as easy, overlearned, or intuitive. In contrast, choosing between qualitatively different desirable social partners is more likely to be difficult and require deliberation and cognitive effort. Therefore, we expected that under conditions of high self-regulatory fatigue, social choices would not be random (i.e., demonstrating a lack of discrimination between all social partner types), and only regulated choices between close and knowledgeable partners would be affected.
Study 1 Study 1 compared the effects of self-regulatory fatigue on changes in social preference associated with perception of limited future time among young adults. Because young adults typically make social choices from an extended time perspective, making decisions from a limited time perspective should be novel, require regulation, and be susceptible to selfregulatory fatigue.
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Method Participants—Participants in Study 1 were 101 undergraduate students who participated for course credit. Self-reported ethnicities of the sample were White (81%), Black (11%), Hispanic (1%), Asian (3%), and more than one race (4%). Of the 101 participants, 22 identified as male, 78 as female, and 1 preferred not to specify. Procedure—After providing informed consent, participants completed a brief demographic questionnaire and a measure of current affect (PANAS-X subscales; see
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Measures). A between-person experimental design randomized each participant to a selfregulatory fatigue condition (high or low) and a time perspective condition (control or timelimited). They completed a practice sorting task by sorting cards with different foods written on them into piles, with foods they would most prefer on the left and those they would least prefer on the right. They were instructed to make as few or as many piles as they preferred and to notify the researcher when they were done.
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Next, all participants were shown a 6-minute video of a woman being interviewed without audio. They were told that they would be asked later to make a judgment of her personality. In fact, no such judgment would be made. In the video, the woman is shown in the upper left quadrant of the screen while words are flashed intermittently in the lower right quadrant. In the high fatigue condition, participants were told, “Do not read or look at any words that may appear on the screen. If you do look at them, immediately redirect your gaze and your attention to the woman on the screen,” whereas participants in the low fatigue condition were given no further instructions. The high-fatigue instructions invoke self-regulation in that participants have to override the impulse to direct their attention to the words (Hagger et al, 2010). When the video was over, they again rated their affect as well as subjective task demand.
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Participants were then provided a stack of cards on which were printed 18 possible social partners (Fredrickson & Carstensen, 1990; Lang & Carstensen, 2002). They were told to imagine that they had half an hour of free time with no pressing commitments, and they had decided to spend it with another person. In the control condition, participants were read the following scenario: “Imagine that you have half an hour of free time in your regular life, with no pressing commitments. You have decided that you’d like to spend this time with another person. Please sort these cards into piles with the person or people you would most like to spend time with on the left and the person or people you would least like to spend time with on the right. Say “done” when you are finished.” In the time-limited condition, participants were instructed to “Imagine that in just a few weeks, you plan to move across the country by yourself. No members of your family or current social circle will be accompanying you on this cross-country move. Although you are preparing for your big departure, you find that you have half an hour of free time, with no pressing commitments. You have decided that you’d like to spend this time with another person. Please sort these cards into piles with the person or people you would most like to spend time with on the left and the person or people you would least like to spend time with on the right” (Fung et al., 1999). They were then instructed to sort the cards into piles representing the social partners they would most like to spend time with at left and those they would least like to spend time with at right, making as many piles as they liked and taking as much time as they needed. The amount of time spent sorting was recorded by the experimenter. Following the task, participants provided ratings of their affect. Measures Subjective experience: Subjective demand of the video task was measured with a 7-item, 5point scale measuring difficulty, stressfulness, fatigue, effort, concentration, and desire to quit the task (Segerstrom & Solberg Nes, 2007). The Positive and Negative Affect Schedule-
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Expanded (PANAS-X) subscales of positive affect, negative affect, fatigue, and attentiveness were administered using the “right now, at the present moment” instructions (Watson & Clark, 1999; Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988). Across the three administrations, all subscales had adequate internal reliability: positive affect, α = .82–.86; negative affect, α = .71–.79; fatigue, α = .87–.90; attentiveness, α = .67–.82.
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Social preference: The 18 social partners listed on the cards (Fredrickson & Carstensen, 1990) represented five types: close family and friends, service providers, “controversial” partners, knowledgeable others, and strangers. These types emerge in multidimensional scaling and factor analyses from large samples with wide age ranges (Fredrickson & Carstensen, 1990; Lang & Carstensen, 2002). Although the hypotheses particularly targeted close and knowledgeable partners, all partners were included in the task to increase the ecological validity of the task and reduce dependency between the partner types of interest (i.e., to ensure that preference for close partners was not the inverse of preference for knowledgeable partners). Cluster analysis of sorting results in both Study 1 and Study 2 identified clusters that consistently (across samples and conditions) represented close friends and family (member of immediate family, sibling, close friend of yours), knowledgeable but not emotionally close partners (poet or artist whose work you like, author of a book you have read), and undesirable or “controversial” partners (person whom you know but dislike, sales
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representative, person running for a local political position, recent acquaintance with whom you have nothing in common). The supplemental online material provides the details of these cluster analyses. Primary analyses focused on the 5 social partners who represent emotional versus knowledge rewards as described in SST; secondary analyses also included the 4 undesirable or “controversial” partners. Social preference was operationalized as pile rank, standardized to number of piles [range = 0 (most preferred) to 1 (least preferred)]. Data analysis—Multilevel models using SAS (v. 9.3) PROC MIXED were used to analyze social preference, with social partners at Level 1 and participants at Level 2. Social partner type was a within-person (Level 1) predictor, and self-regulatory fatigue and time perspective were between-person (Level 2) predictors. The outcome variable was partner preference (pile rank) Y for social partner i (e.g., close friend) and participant j. At Level 1 (within subjects), there was a single predictor, the type of social partner (e.g., family, knowledgeable, controversial), and the model specified: Yij = β0j + β1j(partner type) + eij
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At level 2, the main effects and interactions of self-regulatory fatigue and time perspective with partner type were included. Note that predictors of β0j constitute main effects, and predictors of β1j constitute interactions with partner type. A random effect (U0j) of the intercept (β0j) was included. The model specified: β0j = γ00 + γ01(self-regulatory fatigue condition) + γ02(time perspective condition) + γ03(self-regulatory fatigue*time perspective) + U0j β1j = γ10 + γ11(self-regulatory fatigue condition) + γ12(time perspective condition) + γ13(self-regulatory fatigue*time perspective) Psychol Aging. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2017 September 01.
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By substitution, the full model constituted a full factorial as follows:
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Yij = γ00 + γ01(self-regulatory fatigue condition) + γ02(time perspective condition) + γ10(partner type) + γ03(self-regulatory fatigue*time perspective) + γ11(partner type*self-regulatory fatigue) + γ12(partner type*time perspective) + γ13(partner type*self-regulatory fatigue*time perspective) + U0j + eij The variance of U0j is reported in Table 1 as the Level 2 variance; the variance of eij is reported as the Level 1 variance. Effects in Table 1 are reported as gamma weights, which are analogous to unstandardized beta weights in regression. Results
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Affect, task demand, and sorting parameters—Self-regulatory fatigue is generally not reflected in affect, sometimes including subjective fatigue (Hagger et al., 2010). However, affect could potentially affect social preferences. Therefore, we tested the effect of the fatigue manipulation on affect. In a repeated measures ANOVA (baseline, after the video, and after the social choice task), there were no statistically significant interactions between time and the manipulation on positive affect (F(1, 98) = 0.88, p = .351), negative affect (F(1,98) = 0.12, p = .732), fatigued affect (F(1,98) = 0.24, p = .622), or attentive affect (F(1,98) = 1.66, p = .200). Both fatigue groups tended to appraise the video task as only moderately demanding (high: M = 2.37, SD = 0.77; low: M = 2.22, SD = 0.73; t(99) = 1.03, p = .31). However, the high-fatigue group scored significantly higher than the low-fatigue group on the item ‘I had to concentrate on the activity’ (high: M = 3.57, SD = 0.87; low: M = 3.17, SD = 1.00; t(99) = 2.13, p = .04). Notably, the high-fatigue group was at least as engaged with the task as the low-fatigue group based on the item ‘I wanted to stop before it was over’ (high: M = 2.92, SD = 1.35; low: M = 3.02, SD = 1.52; t(99) = 0.35, p = .73). Therefore, the video task, as intended, required the high-fatigue group to regulate their attention and concentration to a greater degree, but did not result in differences in other aspects of subjective experience or engagement with the task that might explain the results.
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The manipulations also had no statistically significant effects on sorting parameters. There was a tendency for people in the high-fatigue condition to make more piles (M = 3.90, SD = 3.24) than those in the low-fatigue condition (M = 2.96, SD = 1.17), F(1, 98) = 3.79, p = . 055. However, there was no statistically significant main effect of time perspective, F(1,98) = 0.08, p = .777, nor an interaction between time perspective and fatigue, F(1,98) = 1.25, p = .267. There was no statistically significant main effect of self-regulatory fatigue on time spent sorting, F(1,98) = 0.01, p = .903, nor of time perspective, F(1,98) = 0.11, p = .738, nor of their interaction, F(1,98) = 0.21, p = .649. Social preference—The primary hypothesis of Study 1 was tested in a model that compared preferences specifically for knowledgeable and close social partners. Table 1 shows the model result. A statistically significant main effect indicating a greater preference for close over knowledgeable partners and a 2-way interaction in which this preference was greater in the time-limited condition were qualified by a statistically significant 3-way interaction between social partner type, self-regulatory fatigue, and time perspective,
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F(1,398) = 4.59, p = .033. The statistically significant gamma weights in Table 1 have the following interpretations: knowledgeable partners were less preferred than close partners in the control condition (γ = .404), and a time-limited time perspective increased this preference (γ = .305); however, this increase was reversed by high self-regulatory fatigue (γ = −.228). Figure 1 illustrates the difference between preference for close and knowledgeable partners across conditions. When self-regulatory fatigue was low, the time-limited condition decreased preference for knowledgeable others compared with emotionally close others, consistent with SST. However, when self-regulatory fatigue was high, as predicted, time perspective had little effect on social preferences. As shown in Figure 1, this effect was primarily driven by changes in preference for knowledgeable others. The interaction persisted after including control for number of piles, F(1,380) = 8.98, p = .003).
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A second analysis included knowledgeable, close, and controversial partners. The three-way interaction between partner type, time perspective, and self-regulatory fatigue persisted, F(2,194) = 3.41, p = .035. However, across all conditions, mean preference for controversial partners neared the least-preferred maximum of 1.0 (Ms = 0.94 – 0.96). Therefore, selfregulatory fatigue affected responsiveness to the time perspective manipulation in terms of preference for desirable partners (i.e., close and knowledgeable partners) without affecting discrimination between desirable and undesirable social partners. Discussion
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Study 1 demonstrated that younger adults shifted their social preferences in line with predictions made by SST, but that shift was eliminated by self-regulatory fatigue. The results were not due to changes in mood or other choice parameters (e.g., number of piles or time spent sorting; Pocheptsova et al., 2009; Vohs et al., 2008). In addition, self-regulatory fatigue did not affect the discrimination between desirable and undesirable partners, suggesting that aligning desirable partners with time perspective relies on self-regulatory capacity, but social choice between desirable and undesirable partners does not. This finding is consistent with the idea that self-regulatory capacity is required for decisions that result in large trade-offs (i.e., in which more is lost by selecting particular partners over others). For example, there is more to lose in the decision to spend time with a family member over an admired author (i.e., the lost knowledge resources associated with the authors) than in the decision to spend time with a family member over a person you dislike. The findings of Study 1 are therefore consistent with others in which decisions involving large trade-offs resulted in more selfregulatory fatigue than decisions involving small trade-offs (Wang et al., 2010).
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One possibility is that inducing self-regulatory fatigue causes individuals to fall back on their “usual” pattern of social choice. For younger adults, SST would predict that making “usual” social choices would blunt the effects of a limited time perspective by restoring preference for knowledgeable others. The results of Study 1 partially support that prediction insofar as self-regulatory fatigue resulted in greater preference for knowledgeable others and lesser preference for close others (see Figure 1). However, Study 1 cannot discriminate between this possibility and the possibility that fatigue reduces the cognitive resources
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required to attend to, and to align choices with, any time perspective. Therefore, Study 2 employed both younger and older adults. If fatigue reduces cognitive resources, then older and younger adults might be similarly affected. If fatigue causes one to revert to one’s “usual” decisions, for older adults, fatigue would blunt the effects of an extended time perspective but not a limited time perspective, and the opposite would be true for younger adults. Study 2 employed a within-person manipulation of time perspective in which both the effects of limited time and extended time were tested. As in Study 1, we predicted that selfregulatory fatigue would abolish effects of this manipulation, but that fatigue effects would be greater in the time-limited condition for younger adults and time-extended condition for older adults. Finally, we predicted that self-regulatory fatigue would not affect preference for undesirable partners.
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Method
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Participants—Older adults (N = 39) were recruited from a larger, ongoing longitudinal study of community-dwelling men and women over age 60. The main purpose of the larger study is to examine the relationship of psychosocial factors with immune and cognitive functioning in older adults. As part of the study, participants are administered neuropsychological measures and psychological questionnaires and have blood drawn every six months. The older adult sample utilized in the present study consisted of 23 males and 16 females, all of whom self-reported as Caucasian. Mean age of the older adults was 78.1 years (SD = 4.43, range = 68–89). Participants were compensated $50 for their participation. Young adult undergraduate students (N = 42) agreed to participate in the study to fulfill a requirement for an introductory psychology course or to receive $50. Young adult participants were matched to older adults on race and gender. Three additional young-adult Caucasian female participants were included in the analysis to utilize all available data. Mean age of the younger adults was 19.6 years (SD = 2.24, range = 18–30).
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Exclusion criteria for the parent study of older adults included current smoker; autoimmune disease (e.g., rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn’s disease, Type I diabetes); immunosuppressive disorder (e.g., HIV); cancer within the past 5 years; chronic, severe infection (e.g., hepatitis); or chemotherapy or radiation treatment in the past 5 years. Medication exclusions included opiates, systemic steroids, cytotoxic drugs, and Alzheimer’s disease medications. Finally, older adults were included in the parent study if they were taking no more than two of the following medication classes: alpha or beta blockers; ACE inhibitors; hormone replacement; thyroid supplements; or psychiatric drugs (antidepressants, anxiolytics, or hypnotics). The same exclusion criteria were applied to younger adult participants. Procedure Neuropsychological testing: Older adults were administered the neuropsychological measures described below as part of their participation in the larger, longitudinal study on a separate day prior to the main study session. The young adults completed these measures in a brief testing session on a separate day prior to the main study session. Because susceptibility to self-regulatory fatigue has been linked to neuropsychological ability and
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particularly to executive cognitive function (Schmeichel, 2007), this testing permitted comparison of the younger and older adult groups’ executive cognitive function.
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Study session: After providing informed consent, the experiment proceeded as described for Study 1, with two exceptions. First, there was an additional time perspective condition: extended time. In this condition, participants were read the following scenario: “Imagine that last week you found out from your doctor about a new medical advance that insures you will enjoy 20 more years beyond the age you expected to live, in reasonably good health. Now you find that you have half an hour of free time, with no pressing commitments. You have decided that you’d like to spend this time with another person. Please sort these cards into piles with the person or people you would most like to spend time with on the left and the person or people you would least like to spend time with on the right” (Fung et al., 1999). Second, participants completed the social choice task under all 3 time perspective conditions in randomly assigned, counterbalanced order and rated their affect one time after completing all three sorts. Therefore, participants were randomized to a self-regulatory fatigue condition and a time perspective order. Measures—The Trail Making Test (TMT; Tombaugh, 2004) is a well validated and widely utilized assessment of scanning and visuomotor tracking, divided attention, and cognitive flexibility (Lezak, Howeison, Bigler, & Tranel, 2012). The TMT has Part A and Part B. Part A assesses an individual’s motor speed, visuomotor tracking, and scanning abilities, whereas Part B incorporates components of executive functioning (e.g., divided attention and task switching).
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The Controlled Oral Word Association Test (COWA) is a test of phonemic fluency (Reitan & Wolfson, 1985). The COWA requires an examinee to orally produce as many words as possible beginning with a specified letter in one minute. The Digit Span subtest of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale - IV requires participants to repeat increasingly long strings of digits according to instructions and measures aspects of immediate attention capacity, working memory, and sequencing abilities. Affect and social preferences were measured as in Study 1. Reliabilities of the affect subscales were α = .88–.92 for positive affect, α = .77–.64 for negative affect, α = .93 for fatigue, and α = .80–.91 for attentiveness.
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Data analysis—As in Study 1, multilevel models had social partners at Level 1 and participants at Level 2. Social partner type and time perspective were within-person (Level 1) predictors, and self-regulatory fatigue and age group were between-person (Level 2) predictors. As in Study 1, the outcome variable was partner preference (pile rank) Y for social partner i (e.g., close friend) and participant j. In the multilevel models, at Level 1 (within subjects), there were three predictors, the type of social partner, the time perspective condition, and their interaction, and the model specified: Yij = β0j + β1j(partner type) + β2j(time perspective condition) + β3j(partner type*time perspective condition) + eij
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At level 2, the main effects and interactions of self-regulatory fatigue and age group with partner type and time perspective were included. Note that predictors of β0j constitute main effects, predictors of β1j constitute interactions with partner type, predictors of β2j constitute interactions with time perspective, and predictors of β3j constitute interactions with partner type and time perspective. A random effect (U0j) of the intercept (β0j) was included. The model specified: β0j = γ00 + γ01(self-regulatory fatigue condition) + γ02(age group) + γ03(fatigue*age) + U0j β1j = γ10 + γ11(self-regulatory fatigue condition) + γ12(age group) + γ13(fatigue*age)
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β2j = γ20 + γ21(self-regulatory fatigue condition) + γ22(age group) + γ23(fatigue*age) β3j = γ30 + γ31(self-regulatory fatigue condition) + γ32(age group) + γ33(fatigue*age) By substitution, the full model with gamma weights as shown in Table 3 constituted a full factorial as demonstrated for Study 1. The variance of U0j is reported in Table 3 as the Level 2 variance; the variance of eij is reported as the Level 1 variance. Results
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Neuropsychological testing—There were no statistically significant differences between the older and younger adults on total scaled scores for Trail Making Test A, Trail Making Test B, and COWA, suggesting the samples were comparable in terms of their agenormed visual scanning, executive functioning, and verbal fluency abilities (see Table 2). The older adult group had statistically significantly higher scaled scores on Digit Span, suggesting better working memory for age. However, the magnitude of this difference was ½ standard deviation, so it is unlikely this single difference had substantive impact on the primary outcomes.
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Affect and sorting parameters—In a repeated measures ANOVA testing the effect of the self-regulation manipulation on affect before any manipulations, after the video, and after the social choice task, there were no statistically significant main effects of selfregulatory fatigue on positive affect (F(1,76) = 1.03, p = .314), negative affect (F(1,76) = 3.24, p = .076), fatigue (F(1,76) = 0.790, p = .377), or attentiveness (F(1,76) = 0.674, p = . 414). Older adults reported more positive affect (F(1,76) = 32.22, p < .001), attentiveness (F(1,76) = 33.61, p < .001), and fatigue (F(1,76) = 56.98, p < .001), but less negative affect (F(1,76) = 10.53, p = .002) than younger adults. There were no statistically significant selfregulatory fatigue by age group interactions for any affect scale (all ps > .078). In a multi-level model with conditions at Level 1 and people at Level 2, there was a statistically significant interaction between self-regulatory fatigue and time perspective (F(2,152) = 4.82, p = .009), in which people made slightly more piles in the low selfregulatory fatigue condition (M = 3.36) than in the high fatigue condition (M = 3.11) when sorting partners with no additional instructions. However, when sorting partners with time-
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extended or time-limited instructions, people made slightly fewer piles in the low fatigue condition (extended M = 3.29, limited M = 3.21) than in the high fatigue condition (extended M = 3.39, limited M = 3.34). There were no statistically significant effects involving age group on number of piles. There was a statistically significant main effect of age group on time spent sorting. Older adults spent more time sorting (M = 66.3 seconds) than younger adults (M = 51.3 seconds), but there were no other effects or interactions with the experimental conditions that would inform the substantive results.
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Social preference: Replication of Study 1—The first analysis involved only the conditions in Study 1 (younger adults, limited time vs. control, high vs. low self-regulatory fatigue). There was a statistically significant 3-way interaction between social partner type, self-regulatory fatigue, and time perspective that replicated the pattern found in Study 1 (F (1,362) = 3.97, p =.047). As in Study 1, the time-limited condition decreased preference for knowledgeable others compared with emotionally close others, but only in the low fatigue condition. When self-regulatory fatigue was high, this manipulation had little effect on social preferences.
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Social preference: Full model—In the full model, there was a statistically significant 4way interaction between age group, social partner type, self-regulatory fatigue, and time perspective (F (3,1099) = 3.90, p = .009). Table 3 includes the full model results. The statistically significant gamma weights in Table 3 have the following interpretations: knowledgeable partners were less preferred than close partners in the control condition (γ = .346), and a time-limited time perspective increased this effect (γ = .408), but a timeextended perspective did not change it (γ = .007). The effect of a time-limited perspective tended to be reversed by high self-regulatory fatigue (γ = −.231, p = .056). There were additional effects as a function of being older (i.e., the statistically significant four-way interaction); as shown in Figure 2, these effects consisted of a generally higher preference for knowledgeable partners relative to close partners in the high fatigue condition as compared with younger adults. The 4-way interaction persisted after controlling for number of piles, F(3,1097) = 13.15, p < .0001.
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Examination of possible order effects suggested that the effects of fatigue on social preference in the time-limited condition may have decayed in younger adults and increased in older adults. For fatigued younger adults, the difference between close and knowledgeable targets was smaller if the time-limited condition was presented earlier (difference between model estimates for the two targets when presented first, 0.48; second, 0.77; third, 0.91), suggesting a decay in the effect of self-regulatory fatigue (cf., Tyler & Burns, 2008). However, for fatigued older adults, the difference between close and knowledgeable targets was smaller if the time-limited condition was presented later (difference between model estimates for the two targets when presented first: 0.42, second: 0.37, third: 0.26), suggesting increasing self-regulatory fatigue as the choice task continued. However, all statistically significant effects presented in Table 3 remained after controlling for order of the time perspective conditions. There were no notable order effects in the control or time-extended conditions. Psychol Aging. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2017 September 01.
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To summarize Figure 2, in the absence of self-regulatory fatigue, younger and older adults resembled each other in their sensitivity to the time-limited condition, but neither was sensitive to the time-extended manipulation. Self-regulatory fatigue virtually eliminated the effects of time perspective for both older and younger adults. In the self-regulatory fatigue condition, younger adults maintained a preference for close partners across time perspectives, whereas older adults showed a more equal preference for close and knowledgeable partners across time perspectives. As in Study 1, these differences were largely driven by changes in preference for knowledgeable partners. As in Study 1, including controversial targets still resulted in a statistically significant 4-way interaction (F(6,2047) = 2.75, p = .012). Across all samples and conditions, mean preference for controversial partners again neared the least-preferred limit of 1.0 (Ms = 0.91–0.97), suggesting that self-regulatory fatigue did not result in random sorting responses.
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Discussion Study 2 replicated and extended Study 1. When the analysis was limited to the same population (young adults) and manipulations (time-limited and self-regulatory fatigue), nearly identical results were obtained: a limited future time perspective increased preference for close others, an increase that was nearly abolished by self-regulatory fatigue. In the full analysis, older adults showed this same pattern. In general, the results appear to support effects of fatigue on ability to attend to and be guided by time perspective rather than reverting to typical decisions: Fatigue affected older adults’ social preferences in the timelimited condition, which represents the context for their usual social decision-making.
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When fatigued, older adults nearly equally preferred close and knowledgeable others across all time perspective conditions, whereas younger adults preferred close others across all conditions. One possibility is that fatigue had a greater effect on older adults, leading to less discrimination between close and knowledgeable others. The younger and older adults had equivalent executive cognitive function relative to age norms, but age norms are lower (i.e., represent worse function) among older adults. Therefore, older adults may have had greater susceptibility to fatigue by virtue having worse executive cognitive function. Greater susceptibility among older adults may also be implied by the order effects, in which younger adults appeared to recover from the fatigue manipulation while sorting, but older adults appeared to become more fatigued.
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One drawback to Study 2 was the failure of the time-extension manipulation to affect social choices. In older (over 45 years) and younger (under 45 years) residents of San Francisco, the same time-extension manipulation employed in Study 2 resulted in a decrease in the percentage of older adults selecting a familiar social partner over novel partners (Fung et al., 1999). In contrast, there was no statistically significant difference in preference for close social partners between the control and time-extended conditions in the present sample of older adults (γ = −.023, SE = .075, p = .758). Differences between the present study and that of Fung and colleagues (1999) that may account for their different results were methodological (lab vs. phone interview), geographical (a Western large city vs. a Southern small city), and age (M = 62 years with a lower limit of 45 vs. M = 78 years with a lower limit of 60 years); further empirical work may shed light on the cause or causes of Psychol Aging. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2017 September 01.
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discrepancies. For example, for adults in their eighth and ninth decades of life, extending their life may be irrelevant to social choices unless the lives of their close social contacts are also extended: Siblings, family members, and close friends are likely to also have limited time remaining in life.
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Another possibility is that this manipulation is not powerful. This specific method of extending future time perspective has yielded post-manipulation differences in implicit motives, ideal affect, and forgiveness when compared with limiting time (Allemand, 2008; Jiang, Fung, Sims, Tsai, & Zhang, 2016; Valero, Nitikin, & Freund, 2015); however, in one study that included a control group, only the time-limited condition and not the timeextended condition differed from the control condition in its effects on future time perspective and the sunk cost fallacy (Strough, Scholsnagle, Karns, Lemaster & Pichayayothin, 2013). Furthermore, compared with baseline, the time-extended manipulation did not significantly influence implicit motives (Valero et al., 2015). Although the time-extension manipulation was also ineffective compared with control in the present case, we predict that an effective manipulation would be abolished by self-regulatory fatigue, as in the case of the time-limited condition.
General Discussion
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The results of these two studies demonstrate that social choice, like other choices, relies on self-regulatory capability. When self-regulatory capability was fatigued, both older and younger adults no longer made regulated social choices that aligned with time perspective. These short-term effects of self-regulatory fatigue suggest social consequences for populations who experience long-term self-regulatory fatigue. For example, older adults with poorer executive function (a substrate of self-regulatory strength; Schmeichel, 2007) have lower social satisfaction than those with good executive function (von Hippel, Henry, & Matovic, 2008). The present results imply that poorer executive functions leading to less self-regulatory strength might result in social preferences and choices among older adults that are associated with more social strain (to wit, preferences for knowledgeable relative to close others; Lang & Carstensen, 2002).
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Older adults who have poorer executive function are only one subpopulation that might be expected to make social choices that are less than optimal from the perspective of SST. Older adults also have higher prevalence of chronic physical pain compared with younger adults, and chronic physical pain is associated with ongoing self-regulatory fatigue (Elliott, Smith, Penny, Smith, & Chambers, 1999; Solberg Nes, Carlson, Crofford, De Leeuw, & Segerstrom, 2010). Financial disadvantage may also result in chronic self-regulatory fatigue; it has been argued that poverty results in constant demand on self-regulatory resources (e.g., increased need to resist temptations, more difficult decision-making; Mani, Mullainathan, Shafir, & Zhao, 2013; Spears, 2011). Americans have an approximately 50% likelihood of experiencing poverty during older adulthood (Rank & Hirschl, 1999). Therefore, a relationship between self-regulatory fatigue and less regulated social choice implies multiple potential risk factors for higher social strain and lower social well-being among older adults.
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One difference between the present study and previous research on SST is the younger adults’ preference for close others over knowledgeable others in the control condition in both Study 1 and Study 2 (e.g., the leftmost bar in Figure 1 has a positive rather than negative value). Other research has found either no preference for close over knowledgeable others or a slight preference for knowledgeable others, particularly among adolescents (Fredrickson & Carstenson, 1990, Study 2; Fung et al., 1999). Intranational cultural variation may again be important: differences in national region, population density, and the like are associated with differences in social norms and attitudes (e.g., collectivism vs. individualism; Conway, Ryder, Tweed, & Sokol, 2001; Vandello & Cohen, 1999) which in turn could affect baseline social preferences. In addition, those studies employed a paradigm in which participants were forced to choose one of three possible partners: a member of one’s immediate family, a recent acquaintance, or a book author. This ipsative method may yield different decision-making than the method used in the present study, which included many possible partners and was not forced-choice. These findings align with other studies of self-regulatory fatigue and choice not only because fatigue affected choice, but also in the affected parameters. Choices that were expected to be more difficult and that involved higher trade-offs were affected, but choices that were expected to be easier and that involved smaller trade-offs were not, and neither were choice parameters such as time spent choosing (Pocheptsova et al., 2009; Vohs et al., 2008; Wang et al., 2010). The findings also expand on extant studies in that the domain of choice was extended from consumer products to social partners; older adults were a specific population of interest; and fatigue affected context-dependent choice, with the context being time perspective.
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In addition, these findings contradict previous assertions that older adults are insensitive to self-regulatory fatigue because they do not have the “incomplete development of the prefrontal cortex” characteristic of younger adults (Dahm et al., 2011, p. 4). However, in the study on which that conclusion was based, younger and older adults did not differ in their performance (an autobiographical memory task) after self-regulatory fatigue, but older adults underperformed relative to younger adults in the control conditions. Therefore, failure to detect self-regulatory fatigue among older adults may have been due to a floor effect on the test task (Dahm et al., 2011). Although robustness of the effect of experimentally induced self-regulatory fatigue has been called into question (e.g., Carter, Kofler, Forster, & McCullough, 2015; Carter & McCullough, 2014), conclusions that the effect does not exist may be “premature” on both theoretical and methodological grounds (Hagger & Charzisarantis, 2014, p. 298; Inzlicht, Gervais, & Berkman, 2015). Recent theorizing about and empirical evidence for self-regulatory fatigue recognizes that the effects of selfregulatory effort on behavior and physiology are not uniform and are affected by the individual’s self-regulatory resources, motivation, and perception of task importance (e.g., Agtrap, Wright, Mlyniski, Hammad, & Blackledge, 2016; Evans, Boggero, & Segerstrom, 2015; Inzlicht & Schmeichel, 2012; Vohs, Baumeister, & Schmeichel, 2012). Interpersonal tasks such as the present study’s social tasks may engage older adults especially to a greater degree than intrapersonal tasks such as memory tasks, providing a better context in which to investigate fatigue (Hess, 2014).
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The present study maximized internal validity in social choice, time perspective, and selfregulatory fatigue by employing validated experimental manipulations; however, it should be recognized that these manipulations have limited external validity. Further studies that extend these findings to more naturalistic contexts, perhaps examining real social choices, perceived time remaining in life, and individual differences in chronic self-regulatory fatigue, are needed.
Conclusion
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The ability to modify social choices based on time perspective is important for the maintenance of social well-being and avoidance of social strain. When experiencing selfregulatory fatigue, people made less regulated social choices that were less well aligned with time perspective. Older and younger adults were affected similarly, suggesting that clinical and psychosocial issues stemming from self-regulatory fatigue may be present throughout the lifespan. However, this effect of fatigue may be particularly relevant for people who experience chronic self-regulatory fatigue as a consequence of physical pain, poverty, or cognitive deficits, all of which are more likely to affect older than younger adults. Furthermore, older adults, compared with younger adults, may put more value on the emotional wellbeing that is often a byproduct of adaptive social choices. These findings highlight the importance of addressing factors that increase the risk for self-regulatory fatigue in older adults and have implications for promoting successful aging.
Supplementary Material Refer to Web version on PubMed Central for supplementary material.
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Acknowledgments This research was supported by grants from the National Institute of Aging (AG026307-R01, AG033629-K02, AG048692-F31, AG048697-F31, AG028383-P30).
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Preference for close vs. knowledgeable social partners as a function of time perspective (control vs. time-limited) and self-regulatory fatigue (low vs. high) in Study 1 with younger adults. Model estimates (lower values = greater preference) on which the figure is based are shown at bottom.
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Preference for close vs. knowledgeable social partners as a function of time perspective (control vs. time-limited) and self-regulatory fatigue (low vs. high) in Study 2 with older adults (top panel) and younger adults (bottom panel). Model estimates (lower values = greater preference) on which the figure is based are shown at bottom.
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Table 1
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Study 1 multilevel model results predicting social preference (standardized pile rank) from the card-sorting task, ranging from 0 = highest preference to 1 = lowest preference Fixed effects
Effect coding (1 vs. 0)
Intercept
γ
SE
p
.080
.036
.027
.404
.053
Psychol Aging. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2017 September 01. Published in final edited form as: Psychol Aging. 2016 September ; 31(6): 594–604. doi:10.1037/pag0000104.
Time Perspective and Social Preference in Older and Younger Adults: Effects of Self-Regulatory Fatigue Suzanne C. Segerstrom, Paul J. Geiger, Hannah L. Combs, and Ian A. Boggero Department of Psychology, University of Kentucky
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Socioemotional selectivity theory predicts that when perceived time in life is limited, people will prefer emotionally close social partners over less emotionally rewarding partners. Regulating social choices with regard to time perspective can make the best use of time with regard to wellbeing. However, doing so may depend on the self-regulatory capacity of the individual. Two studies, one with younger adults (N = 101) and one with younger (N = 42) and older (N = 39) adults, experimentally tested the effects of time perspective and self-regulatory fatigue on preferences for emotionally close partners and knowledgeable partners. In both studies and across younger and older adults, when self-regulatory fatigue was low, the perception of limited time resulted in a greater preference for close social partners relative to knowledgeable social partners. However, this shift was eliminated by self-regulatory fatigue. In Study 2, when fatigued, younger adults preferred close social partners to knowledgeable partners across time perspectives; older adults preferred close and knowledgeable partners more equally across time perspectives. These findings have implications for social decision-making and satisfaction among people who experience chronic self-regulatory fatigue. They also contradict previous suggestions that only younger adults are susceptible to self-regulatory fatigue.
Keywords self-regulation; ego depletion; socioemotional selectivity; social choice; aging
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Changes in time perspective affect social preferences: When future time is perceived as limited (e.g., as a consequence of aging or disease), emotionally close social partners, such as family members, are preferred over other desirable but less emotionally rewarding partners, such as admired authors (Fredrickson & Carstensen, 1990; Fung, Carstensen, & Lutz, 1999). These preferences are predicted by socioemotional selectivity theory (SST; Carstensen, Isaacowitz, & Charles, 1999), which posits that perception of limited future time leads to preferences for activities, people, and goals that provide short-term, hedonic value (e.g., social and emotional well-being) over those that provide long-term, functional value (e.g., knowledge and information).
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Suzanne C. Segerstrom, Department of Psychology, University of Kentucky, 125 Kastle Hall, Lexington, KY 40506-0044. [email protected].
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Beginning in middle adulthood and continuing through old age, contact and satisfaction with acquaintances decreases and contact and satisfaction with close friends and family members increases, consistent with SST (Bond, Thompson, & Malloy, 2005; Carstensen, 1992; Doherty & Feeney, 2004; Fung, Carstensen, & Lang, 2001; Lang & Carstensen, 1994). The effect is robust when controlling for health and for age of social network members, suggesting that social network change with older age is likely to be a matter of motivated choice rather than functional limitations. Supporting this suggestion, older age correlated with greater desire to spend time with family members and lesser desire to spend time with other social partners; these desires correlated with actual network characteristics (Lang & Carstensen, 2002).
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Regulating social choices to align with time perspective can make the best use of available time with regard to well-being. In a lifespan sample, preference for different kinds of social partners predicted social well-being (Lang & Carstensen, 2002). Higher preference for family members was associated with higher social satisfaction for all age groups. However, higher preference for “knowledgeable partners” (e.g., author, artist) was associated with higher social strain, particular among older adults. Among women with metastatic breast cancer (M age = 57 years), goals consistent with limited future time, including spending time with close social partners, were associated with better psychological adjustment than goals consistent with expansive future time, including spending time with distant social partners (Sullivan-Singh, Stanton, & Low, 2015). Social preferences that favor emotionally close others contribute to older adults’ goal of maximizing social and emotional well-being.
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However, some individuals make social choices that do not maximize well-being (Lang & Carstensen, 2002). The purpose of the present studies was to test whether such choices might be due to deficits in self-regulatory capacity. Because age-related social preferences reflect top-down motivational processes, they are likely to be contingent on the availability of cognitive resources. For example, aligning social choices with time perspective may require attention to time cues and holding such cues in working memory while deciding among social partners, rather than making impulsive or unconsidered decisions. The resources required in decision-making can be captured under the umbrella of self-regulation, defined as deliberative control over thoughts, emotions, behaviors, and impulses.
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Self-regulatory capacity can be chronically or acutely fatigued, resulting in poor selfregulatory performance (Hagger, Wood, Stiff & Chatzisarantis, 2010; Solberg Nes, Carlson, Crofford, De Leeuw, & Segerstrom, 2010). For example, after people perform a task requiring self-regulation, performance on a subsequent self-regulatory task suffers (Hagger et al., 2010). Some such studies have examined whether self-regulation is involved in decision-making, concluding that decision-making does rely on self-regulatory capacity. Experimental induction of self-regulatory fatigue resulted in decision-making (among consumer goods or hypothetical jobs) that was more intuitive and less deliberative (Pocheptsova, Amir, Dhar, & Baumeister, 2009). Conversely, simply deciding among options for consumer goods or college courses apparently used self-regulatory capacity in that the result was self-regulatory fatigue (lower persistence and performance on a subsequent self-regulatory task; Vohs et al., 2008; Wang, Novemsky, Dhar, & Baumeister, 2010). If decision-making relies on self-regulatory capacity, when individuals experience
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self-regulatory fatigue, they may make social choices that are not well regulated with regard to time perspective. However, no research to our knowledge has examined effects of selfregulatory fatigue on decisions among social partners.
The present studies
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The present studies tested whether experimentally induced self-regulatory fatigue affected social choices as predicted by SST in younger (Studies 1 and 2) and older (Study 2) adults. These studies employed manipulations of time perspective in which participants were asked to imagine circumstances that limited future time (Studies 1 and 2) or extended future time (Study 2). Under conditions of low self-regulatory fatigue, we predicted that perception of limited future time would decrease preference for knowledgeable social partners and increase preference for emotionally close social partners, whereas perception of extended future time would have the opposite effect. Under conditions of high self-regulatory fatigue, these changes should be blunted or abolished, because participants who have previously been fatigued make less regulated choices among these desirable social partners than those who have not. This failure to regulate might occur because of reduced ability to attend to time perspective in making social decisions or because fatigue causes people to revert to their typical, automatic, or overlearned social decisions (which might vary between younger and older adults.)
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We further predicted that self-regulatory fatigue would not affect preferences for undesirable partners. Choosing between desirable and undesirable social partners should not require selfregulation, as these choices can be characterized as easy, overlearned, or intuitive. In contrast, choosing between qualitatively different desirable social partners is more likely to be difficult and require deliberation and cognitive effort. Therefore, we expected that under conditions of high self-regulatory fatigue, social choices would not be random (i.e., demonstrating a lack of discrimination between all social partner types), and only regulated choices between close and knowledgeable partners would be affected.
Study 1 Study 1 compared the effects of self-regulatory fatigue on changes in social preference associated with perception of limited future time among young adults. Because young adults typically make social choices from an extended time perspective, making decisions from a limited time perspective should be novel, require regulation, and be susceptible to selfregulatory fatigue.
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Method Participants—Participants in Study 1 were 101 undergraduate students who participated for course credit. Self-reported ethnicities of the sample were White (81%), Black (11%), Hispanic (1%), Asian (3%), and more than one race (4%). Of the 101 participants, 22 identified as male, 78 as female, and 1 preferred not to specify. Procedure—After providing informed consent, participants completed a brief demographic questionnaire and a measure of current affect (PANAS-X subscales; see
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Measures). A between-person experimental design randomized each participant to a selfregulatory fatigue condition (high or low) and a time perspective condition (control or timelimited). They completed a practice sorting task by sorting cards with different foods written on them into piles, with foods they would most prefer on the left and those they would least prefer on the right. They were instructed to make as few or as many piles as they preferred and to notify the researcher when they were done.
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Next, all participants were shown a 6-minute video of a woman being interviewed without audio. They were told that they would be asked later to make a judgment of her personality. In fact, no such judgment would be made. In the video, the woman is shown in the upper left quadrant of the screen while words are flashed intermittently in the lower right quadrant. In the high fatigue condition, participants were told, “Do not read or look at any words that may appear on the screen. If you do look at them, immediately redirect your gaze and your attention to the woman on the screen,” whereas participants in the low fatigue condition were given no further instructions. The high-fatigue instructions invoke self-regulation in that participants have to override the impulse to direct their attention to the words (Hagger et al, 2010). When the video was over, they again rated their affect as well as subjective task demand.
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Participants were then provided a stack of cards on which were printed 18 possible social partners (Fredrickson & Carstensen, 1990; Lang & Carstensen, 2002). They were told to imagine that they had half an hour of free time with no pressing commitments, and they had decided to spend it with another person. In the control condition, participants were read the following scenario: “Imagine that you have half an hour of free time in your regular life, with no pressing commitments. You have decided that you’d like to spend this time with another person. Please sort these cards into piles with the person or people you would most like to spend time with on the left and the person or people you would least like to spend time with on the right. Say “done” when you are finished.” In the time-limited condition, participants were instructed to “Imagine that in just a few weeks, you plan to move across the country by yourself. No members of your family or current social circle will be accompanying you on this cross-country move. Although you are preparing for your big departure, you find that you have half an hour of free time, with no pressing commitments. You have decided that you’d like to spend this time with another person. Please sort these cards into piles with the person or people you would most like to spend time with on the left and the person or people you would least like to spend time with on the right” (Fung et al., 1999). They were then instructed to sort the cards into piles representing the social partners they would most like to spend time with at left and those they would least like to spend time with at right, making as many piles as they liked and taking as much time as they needed. The amount of time spent sorting was recorded by the experimenter. Following the task, participants provided ratings of their affect. Measures Subjective experience: Subjective demand of the video task was measured with a 7-item, 5point scale measuring difficulty, stressfulness, fatigue, effort, concentration, and desire to quit the task (Segerstrom & Solberg Nes, 2007). The Positive and Negative Affect Schedule-
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Expanded (PANAS-X) subscales of positive affect, negative affect, fatigue, and attentiveness were administered using the “right now, at the present moment” instructions (Watson & Clark, 1999; Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988). Across the three administrations, all subscales had adequate internal reliability: positive affect, α = .82–.86; negative affect, α = .71–.79; fatigue, α = .87–.90; attentiveness, α = .67–.82.
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Social preference: The 18 social partners listed on the cards (Fredrickson & Carstensen, 1990) represented five types: close family and friends, service providers, “controversial” partners, knowledgeable others, and strangers. These types emerge in multidimensional scaling and factor analyses from large samples with wide age ranges (Fredrickson & Carstensen, 1990; Lang & Carstensen, 2002). Although the hypotheses particularly targeted close and knowledgeable partners, all partners were included in the task to increase the ecological validity of the task and reduce dependency between the partner types of interest (i.e., to ensure that preference for close partners was not the inverse of preference for knowledgeable partners). Cluster analysis of sorting results in both Study 1 and Study 2 identified clusters that consistently (across samples and conditions) represented close friends and family (member of immediate family, sibling, close friend of yours), knowledgeable but not emotionally close partners (poet or artist whose work you like, author of a book you have read), and undesirable or “controversial” partners (person whom you know but dislike, sales
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representative, person running for a local political position, recent acquaintance with whom you have nothing in common). The supplemental online material provides the details of these cluster analyses. Primary analyses focused on the 5 social partners who represent emotional versus knowledge rewards as described in SST; secondary analyses also included the 4 undesirable or “controversial” partners. Social preference was operationalized as pile rank, standardized to number of piles [range = 0 (most preferred) to 1 (least preferred)]. Data analysis—Multilevel models using SAS (v. 9.3) PROC MIXED were used to analyze social preference, with social partners at Level 1 and participants at Level 2. Social partner type was a within-person (Level 1) predictor, and self-regulatory fatigue and time perspective were between-person (Level 2) predictors. The outcome variable was partner preference (pile rank) Y for social partner i (e.g., close friend) and participant j. At Level 1 (within subjects), there was a single predictor, the type of social partner (e.g., family, knowledgeable, controversial), and the model specified: Yij = β0j + β1j(partner type) + eij
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At level 2, the main effects and interactions of self-regulatory fatigue and time perspective with partner type were included. Note that predictors of β0j constitute main effects, and predictors of β1j constitute interactions with partner type. A random effect (U0j) of the intercept (β0j) was included. The model specified: β0j = γ00 + γ01(self-regulatory fatigue condition) + γ02(time perspective condition) + γ03(self-regulatory fatigue*time perspective) + U0j β1j = γ10 + γ11(self-regulatory fatigue condition) + γ12(time perspective condition) + γ13(self-regulatory fatigue*time perspective) Psychol Aging. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2017 September 01.
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By substitution, the full model constituted a full factorial as follows:
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Yij = γ00 + γ01(self-regulatory fatigue condition) + γ02(time perspective condition) + γ10(partner type) + γ03(self-regulatory fatigue*time perspective) + γ11(partner type*self-regulatory fatigue) + γ12(partner type*time perspective) + γ13(partner type*self-regulatory fatigue*time perspective) + U0j + eij The variance of U0j is reported in Table 1 as the Level 2 variance; the variance of eij is reported as the Level 1 variance. Effects in Table 1 are reported as gamma weights, which are analogous to unstandardized beta weights in regression. Results
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Affect, task demand, and sorting parameters—Self-regulatory fatigue is generally not reflected in affect, sometimes including subjective fatigue (Hagger et al., 2010). However, affect could potentially affect social preferences. Therefore, we tested the effect of the fatigue manipulation on affect. In a repeated measures ANOVA (baseline, after the video, and after the social choice task), there were no statistically significant interactions between time and the manipulation on positive affect (F(1, 98) = 0.88, p = .351), negative affect (F(1,98) = 0.12, p = .732), fatigued affect (F(1,98) = 0.24, p = .622), or attentive affect (F(1,98) = 1.66, p = .200). Both fatigue groups tended to appraise the video task as only moderately demanding (high: M = 2.37, SD = 0.77; low: M = 2.22, SD = 0.73; t(99) = 1.03, p = .31). However, the high-fatigue group scored significantly higher than the low-fatigue group on the item ‘I had to concentrate on the activity’ (high: M = 3.57, SD = 0.87; low: M = 3.17, SD = 1.00; t(99) = 2.13, p = .04). Notably, the high-fatigue group was at least as engaged with the task as the low-fatigue group based on the item ‘I wanted to stop before it was over’ (high: M = 2.92, SD = 1.35; low: M = 3.02, SD = 1.52; t(99) = 0.35, p = .73). Therefore, the video task, as intended, required the high-fatigue group to regulate their attention and concentration to a greater degree, but did not result in differences in other aspects of subjective experience or engagement with the task that might explain the results.
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The manipulations also had no statistically significant effects on sorting parameters. There was a tendency for people in the high-fatigue condition to make more piles (M = 3.90, SD = 3.24) than those in the low-fatigue condition (M = 2.96, SD = 1.17), F(1, 98) = 3.79, p = . 055. However, there was no statistically significant main effect of time perspective, F(1,98) = 0.08, p = .777, nor an interaction between time perspective and fatigue, F(1,98) = 1.25, p = .267. There was no statistically significant main effect of self-regulatory fatigue on time spent sorting, F(1,98) = 0.01, p = .903, nor of time perspective, F(1,98) = 0.11, p = .738, nor of their interaction, F(1,98) = 0.21, p = .649. Social preference—The primary hypothesis of Study 1 was tested in a model that compared preferences specifically for knowledgeable and close social partners. Table 1 shows the model result. A statistically significant main effect indicating a greater preference for close over knowledgeable partners and a 2-way interaction in which this preference was greater in the time-limited condition were qualified by a statistically significant 3-way interaction between social partner type, self-regulatory fatigue, and time perspective,
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F(1,398) = 4.59, p = .033. The statistically significant gamma weights in Table 1 have the following interpretations: knowledgeable partners were less preferred than close partners in the control condition (γ = .404), and a time-limited time perspective increased this preference (γ = .305); however, this increase was reversed by high self-regulatory fatigue (γ = −.228). Figure 1 illustrates the difference between preference for close and knowledgeable partners across conditions. When self-regulatory fatigue was low, the time-limited condition decreased preference for knowledgeable others compared with emotionally close others, consistent with SST. However, when self-regulatory fatigue was high, as predicted, time perspective had little effect on social preferences. As shown in Figure 1, this effect was primarily driven by changes in preference for knowledgeable others. The interaction persisted after including control for number of piles, F(1,380) = 8.98, p = .003).
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A second analysis included knowledgeable, close, and controversial partners. The three-way interaction between partner type, time perspective, and self-regulatory fatigue persisted, F(2,194) = 3.41, p = .035. However, across all conditions, mean preference for controversial partners neared the least-preferred maximum of 1.0 (Ms = 0.94 – 0.96). Therefore, selfregulatory fatigue affected responsiveness to the time perspective manipulation in terms of preference for desirable partners (i.e., close and knowledgeable partners) without affecting discrimination between desirable and undesirable social partners. Discussion
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Study 1 demonstrated that younger adults shifted their social preferences in line with predictions made by SST, but that shift was eliminated by self-regulatory fatigue. The results were not due to changes in mood or other choice parameters (e.g., number of piles or time spent sorting; Pocheptsova et al., 2009; Vohs et al., 2008). In addition, self-regulatory fatigue did not affect the discrimination between desirable and undesirable partners, suggesting that aligning desirable partners with time perspective relies on self-regulatory capacity, but social choice between desirable and undesirable partners does not. This finding is consistent with the idea that self-regulatory capacity is required for decisions that result in large trade-offs (i.e., in which more is lost by selecting particular partners over others). For example, there is more to lose in the decision to spend time with a family member over an admired author (i.e., the lost knowledge resources associated with the authors) than in the decision to spend time with a family member over a person you dislike. The findings of Study 1 are therefore consistent with others in which decisions involving large trade-offs resulted in more selfregulatory fatigue than decisions involving small trade-offs (Wang et al., 2010).
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One possibility is that inducing self-regulatory fatigue causes individuals to fall back on their “usual” pattern of social choice. For younger adults, SST would predict that making “usual” social choices would blunt the effects of a limited time perspective by restoring preference for knowledgeable others. The results of Study 1 partially support that prediction insofar as self-regulatory fatigue resulted in greater preference for knowledgeable others and lesser preference for close others (see Figure 1). However, Study 1 cannot discriminate between this possibility and the possibility that fatigue reduces the cognitive resources
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required to attend to, and to align choices with, any time perspective. Therefore, Study 2 employed both younger and older adults. If fatigue reduces cognitive resources, then older and younger adults might be similarly affected. If fatigue causes one to revert to one’s “usual” decisions, for older adults, fatigue would blunt the effects of an extended time perspective but not a limited time perspective, and the opposite would be true for younger adults. Study 2 employed a within-person manipulation of time perspective in which both the effects of limited time and extended time were tested. As in Study 1, we predicted that selfregulatory fatigue would abolish effects of this manipulation, but that fatigue effects would be greater in the time-limited condition for younger adults and time-extended condition for older adults. Finally, we predicted that self-regulatory fatigue would not affect preference for undesirable partners.
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Method
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Participants—Older adults (N = 39) were recruited from a larger, ongoing longitudinal study of community-dwelling men and women over age 60. The main purpose of the larger study is to examine the relationship of psychosocial factors with immune and cognitive functioning in older adults. As part of the study, participants are administered neuropsychological measures and psychological questionnaires and have blood drawn every six months. The older adult sample utilized in the present study consisted of 23 males and 16 females, all of whom self-reported as Caucasian. Mean age of the older adults was 78.1 years (SD = 4.43, range = 68–89). Participants were compensated $50 for their participation. Young adult undergraduate students (N = 42) agreed to participate in the study to fulfill a requirement for an introductory psychology course or to receive $50. Young adult participants were matched to older adults on race and gender. Three additional young-adult Caucasian female participants were included in the analysis to utilize all available data. Mean age of the younger adults was 19.6 years (SD = 2.24, range = 18–30).
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Exclusion criteria for the parent study of older adults included current smoker; autoimmune disease (e.g., rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn’s disease, Type I diabetes); immunosuppressive disorder (e.g., HIV); cancer within the past 5 years; chronic, severe infection (e.g., hepatitis); or chemotherapy or radiation treatment in the past 5 years. Medication exclusions included opiates, systemic steroids, cytotoxic drugs, and Alzheimer’s disease medications. Finally, older adults were included in the parent study if they were taking no more than two of the following medication classes: alpha or beta blockers; ACE inhibitors; hormone replacement; thyroid supplements; or psychiatric drugs (antidepressants, anxiolytics, or hypnotics). The same exclusion criteria were applied to younger adult participants. Procedure Neuropsychological testing: Older adults were administered the neuropsychological measures described below as part of their participation in the larger, longitudinal study on a separate day prior to the main study session. The young adults completed these measures in a brief testing session on a separate day prior to the main study session. Because susceptibility to self-regulatory fatigue has been linked to neuropsychological ability and
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particularly to executive cognitive function (Schmeichel, 2007), this testing permitted comparison of the younger and older adult groups’ executive cognitive function.
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Study session: After providing informed consent, the experiment proceeded as described for Study 1, with two exceptions. First, there was an additional time perspective condition: extended time. In this condition, participants were read the following scenario: “Imagine that last week you found out from your doctor about a new medical advance that insures you will enjoy 20 more years beyond the age you expected to live, in reasonably good health. Now you find that you have half an hour of free time, with no pressing commitments. You have decided that you’d like to spend this time with another person. Please sort these cards into piles with the person or people you would most like to spend time with on the left and the person or people you would least like to spend time with on the right” (Fung et al., 1999). Second, participants completed the social choice task under all 3 time perspective conditions in randomly assigned, counterbalanced order and rated their affect one time after completing all three sorts. Therefore, participants were randomized to a self-regulatory fatigue condition and a time perspective order. Measures—The Trail Making Test (TMT; Tombaugh, 2004) is a well validated and widely utilized assessment of scanning and visuomotor tracking, divided attention, and cognitive flexibility (Lezak, Howeison, Bigler, & Tranel, 2012). The TMT has Part A and Part B. Part A assesses an individual’s motor speed, visuomotor tracking, and scanning abilities, whereas Part B incorporates components of executive functioning (e.g., divided attention and task switching).
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The Controlled Oral Word Association Test (COWA) is a test of phonemic fluency (Reitan & Wolfson, 1985). The COWA requires an examinee to orally produce as many words as possible beginning with a specified letter in one minute. The Digit Span subtest of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale - IV requires participants to repeat increasingly long strings of digits according to instructions and measures aspects of immediate attention capacity, working memory, and sequencing abilities. Affect and social preferences were measured as in Study 1. Reliabilities of the affect subscales were α = .88–.92 for positive affect, α = .77–.64 for negative affect, α = .93 for fatigue, and α = .80–.91 for attentiveness.
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Data analysis—As in Study 1, multilevel models had social partners at Level 1 and participants at Level 2. Social partner type and time perspective were within-person (Level 1) predictors, and self-regulatory fatigue and age group were between-person (Level 2) predictors. As in Study 1, the outcome variable was partner preference (pile rank) Y for social partner i (e.g., close friend) and participant j. In the multilevel models, at Level 1 (within subjects), there were three predictors, the type of social partner, the time perspective condition, and their interaction, and the model specified: Yij = β0j + β1j(partner type) + β2j(time perspective condition) + β3j(partner type*time perspective condition) + eij
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At level 2, the main effects and interactions of self-regulatory fatigue and age group with partner type and time perspective were included. Note that predictors of β0j constitute main effects, predictors of β1j constitute interactions with partner type, predictors of β2j constitute interactions with time perspective, and predictors of β3j constitute interactions with partner type and time perspective. A random effect (U0j) of the intercept (β0j) was included. The model specified: β0j = γ00 + γ01(self-regulatory fatigue condition) + γ02(age group) + γ03(fatigue*age) + U0j β1j = γ10 + γ11(self-regulatory fatigue condition) + γ12(age group) + γ13(fatigue*age)
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β2j = γ20 + γ21(self-regulatory fatigue condition) + γ22(age group) + γ23(fatigue*age) β3j = γ30 + γ31(self-regulatory fatigue condition) + γ32(age group) + γ33(fatigue*age) By substitution, the full model with gamma weights as shown in Table 3 constituted a full factorial as demonstrated for Study 1. The variance of U0j is reported in Table 3 as the Level 2 variance; the variance of eij is reported as the Level 1 variance. Results
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Neuropsychological testing—There were no statistically significant differences between the older and younger adults on total scaled scores for Trail Making Test A, Trail Making Test B, and COWA, suggesting the samples were comparable in terms of their agenormed visual scanning, executive functioning, and verbal fluency abilities (see Table 2). The older adult group had statistically significantly higher scaled scores on Digit Span, suggesting better working memory for age. However, the magnitude of this difference was ½ standard deviation, so it is unlikely this single difference had substantive impact on the primary outcomes.
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Affect and sorting parameters—In a repeated measures ANOVA testing the effect of the self-regulation manipulation on affect before any manipulations, after the video, and after the social choice task, there were no statistically significant main effects of selfregulatory fatigue on positive affect (F(1,76) = 1.03, p = .314), negative affect (F(1,76) = 3.24, p = .076), fatigue (F(1,76) = 0.790, p = .377), or attentiveness (F(1,76) = 0.674, p = . 414). Older adults reported more positive affect (F(1,76) = 32.22, p < .001), attentiveness (F(1,76) = 33.61, p < .001), and fatigue (F(1,76) = 56.98, p < .001), but less negative affect (F(1,76) = 10.53, p = .002) than younger adults. There were no statistically significant selfregulatory fatigue by age group interactions for any affect scale (all ps > .078). In a multi-level model with conditions at Level 1 and people at Level 2, there was a statistically significant interaction between self-regulatory fatigue and time perspective (F(2,152) = 4.82, p = .009), in which people made slightly more piles in the low selfregulatory fatigue condition (M = 3.36) than in the high fatigue condition (M = 3.11) when sorting partners with no additional instructions. However, when sorting partners with time-
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extended or time-limited instructions, people made slightly fewer piles in the low fatigue condition (extended M = 3.29, limited M = 3.21) than in the high fatigue condition (extended M = 3.39, limited M = 3.34). There were no statistically significant effects involving age group on number of piles. There was a statistically significant main effect of age group on time spent sorting. Older adults spent more time sorting (M = 66.3 seconds) than younger adults (M = 51.3 seconds), but there were no other effects or interactions with the experimental conditions that would inform the substantive results.
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Social preference: Replication of Study 1—The first analysis involved only the conditions in Study 1 (younger adults, limited time vs. control, high vs. low self-regulatory fatigue). There was a statistically significant 3-way interaction between social partner type, self-regulatory fatigue, and time perspective that replicated the pattern found in Study 1 (F (1,362) = 3.97, p =.047). As in Study 1, the time-limited condition decreased preference for knowledgeable others compared with emotionally close others, but only in the low fatigue condition. When self-regulatory fatigue was high, this manipulation had little effect on social preferences.
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Social preference: Full model—In the full model, there was a statistically significant 4way interaction between age group, social partner type, self-regulatory fatigue, and time perspective (F (3,1099) = 3.90, p = .009). Table 3 includes the full model results. The statistically significant gamma weights in Table 3 have the following interpretations: knowledgeable partners were less preferred than close partners in the control condition (γ = .346), and a time-limited time perspective increased this effect (γ = .408), but a timeextended perspective did not change it (γ = .007). The effect of a time-limited perspective tended to be reversed by high self-regulatory fatigue (γ = −.231, p = .056). There were additional effects as a function of being older (i.e., the statistically significant four-way interaction); as shown in Figure 2, these effects consisted of a generally higher preference for knowledgeable partners relative to close partners in the high fatigue condition as compared with younger adults. The 4-way interaction persisted after controlling for number of piles, F(3,1097) = 13.15, p < .0001.
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Examination of possible order effects suggested that the effects of fatigue on social preference in the time-limited condition may have decayed in younger adults and increased in older adults. For fatigued younger adults, the difference between close and knowledgeable targets was smaller if the time-limited condition was presented earlier (difference between model estimates for the two targets when presented first, 0.48; second, 0.77; third, 0.91), suggesting a decay in the effect of self-regulatory fatigue (cf., Tyler & Burns, 2008). However, for fatigued older adults, the difference between close and knowledgeable targets was smaller if the time-limited condition was presented later (difference between model estimates for the two targets when presented first: 0.42, second: 0.37, third: 0.26), suggesting increasing self-regulatory fatigue as the choice task continued. However, all statistically significant effects presented in Table 3 remained after controlling for order of the time perspective conditions. There were no notable order effects in the control or time-extended conditions. Psychol Aging. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2017 September 01.
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To summarize Figure 2, in the absence of self-regulatory fatigue, younger and older adults resembled each other in their sensitivity to the time-limited condition, but neither was sensitive to the time-extended manipulation. Self-regulatory fatigue virtually eliminated the effects of time perspective for both older and younger adults. In the self-regulatory fatigue condition, younger adults maintained a preference for close partners across time perspectives, whereas older adults showed a more equal preference for close and knowledgeable partners across time perspectives. As in Study 1, these differences were largely driven by changes in preference for knowledgeable partners. As in Study 1, including controversial targets still resulted in a statistically significant 4-way interaction (F(6,2047) = 2.75, p = .012). Across all samples and conditions, mean preference for controversial partners again neared the least-preferred limit of 1.0 (Ms = 0.91–0.97), suggesting that self-regulatory fatigue did not result in random sorting responses.
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Discussion Study 2 replicated and extended Study 1. When the analysis was limited to the same population (young adults) and manipulations (time-limited and self-regulatory fatigue), nearly identical results were obtained: a limited future time perspective increased preference for close others, an increase that was nearly abolished by self-regulatory fatigue. In the full analysis, older adults showed this same pattern. In general, the results appear to support effects of fatigue on ability to attend to and be guided by time perspective rather than reverting to typical decisions: Fatigue affected older adults’ social preferences in the timelimited condition, which represents the context for their usual social decision-making.
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When fatigued, older adults nearly equally preferred close and knowledgeable others across all time perspective conditions, whereas younger adults preferred close others across all conditions. One possibility is that fatigue had a greater effect on older adults, leading to less discrimination between close and knowledgeable others. The younger and older adults had equivalent executive cognitive function relative to age norms, but age norms are lower (i.e., represent worse function) among older adults. Therefore, older adults may have had greater susceptibility to fatigue by virtue having worse executive cognitive function. Greater susceptibility among older adults may also be implied by the order effects, in which younger adults appeared to recover from the fatigue manipulation while sorting, but older adults appeared to become more fatigued.
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One drawback to Study 2 was the failure of the time-extension manipulation to affect social choices. In older (over 45 years) and younger (under 45 years) residents of San Francisco, the same time-extension manipulation employed in Study 2 resulted in a decrease in the percentage of older adults selecting a familiar social partner over novel partners (Fung et al., 1999). In contrast, there was no statistically significant difference in preference for close social partners between the control and time-extended conditions in the present sample of older adults (γ = −.023, SE = .075, p = .758). Differences between the present study and that of Fung and colleagues (1999) that may account for their different results were methodological (lab vs. phone interview), geographical (a Western large city vs. a Southern small city), and age (M = 62 years with a lower limit of 45 vs. M = 78 years with a lower limit of 60 years); further empirical work may shed light on the cause or causes of Psychol Aging. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2017 September 01.
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discrepancies. For example, for adults in their eighth and ninth decades of life, extending their life may be irrelevant to social choices unless the lives of their close social contacts are also extended: Siblings, family members, and close friends are likely to also have limited time remaining in life.
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Another possibility is that this manipulation is not powerful. This specific method of extending future time perspective has yielded post-manipulation differences in implicit motives, ideal affect, and forgiveness when compared with limiting time (Allemand, 2008; Jiang, Fung, Sims, Tsai, & Zhang, 2016; Valero, Nitikin, & Freund, 2015); however, in one study that included a control group, only the time-limited condition and not the timeextended condition differed from the control condition in its effects on future time perspective and the sunk cost fallacy (Strough, Scholsnagle, Karns, Lemaster & Pichayayothin, 2013). Furthermore, compared with baseline, the time-extended manipulation did not significantly influence implicit motives (Valero et al., 2015). Although the time-extension manipulation was also ineffective compared with control in the present case, we predict that an effective manipulation would be abolished by self-regulatory fatigue, as in the case of the time-limited condition.
General Discussion
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The results of these two studies demonstrate that social choice, like other choices, relies on self-regulatory capability. When self-regulatory capability was fatigued, both older and younger adults no longer made regulated social choices that aligned with time perspective. These short-term effects of self-regulatory fatigue suggest social consequences for populations who experience long-term self-regulatory fatigue. For example, older adults with poorer executive function (a substrate of self-regulatory strength; Schmeichel, 2007) have lower social satisfaction than those with good executive function (von Hippel, Henry, & Matovic, 2008). The present results imply that poorer executive functions leading to less self-regulatory strength might result in social preferences and choices among older adults that are associated with more social strain (to wit, preferences for knowledgeable relative to close others; Lang & Carstensen, 2002).
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Older adults who have poorer executive function are only one subpopulation that might be expected to make social choices that are less than optimal from the perspective of SST. Older adults also have higher prevalence of chronic physical pain compared with younger adults, and chronic physical pain is associated with ongoing self-regulatory fatigue (Elliott, Smith, Penny, Smith, & Chambers, 1999; Solberg Nes, Carlson, Crofford, De Leeuw, & Segerstrom, 2010). Financial disadvantage may also result in chronic self-regulatory fatigue; it has been argued that poverty results in constant demand on self-regulatory resources (e.g., increased need to resist temptations, more difficult decision-making; Mani, Mullainathan, Shafir, & Zhao, 2013; Spears, 2011). Americans have an approximately 50% likelihood of experiencing poverty during older adulthood (Rank & Hirschl, 1999). Therefore, a relationship between self-regulatory fatigue and less regulated social choice implies multiple potential risk factors for higher social strain and lower social well-being among older adults.
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One difference between the present study and previous research on SST is the younger adults’ preference for close others over knowledgeable others in the control condition in both Study 1 and Study 2 (e.g., the leftmost bar in Figure 1 has a positive rather than negative value). Other research has found either no preference for close over knowledgeable others or a slight preference for knowledgeable others, particularly among adolescents (Fredrickson & Carstenson, 1990, Study 2; Fung et al., 1999). Intranational cultural variation may again be important: differences in national region, population density, and the like are associated with differences in social norms and attitudes (e.g., collectivism vs. individualism; Conway, Ryder, Tweed, & Sokol, 2001; Vandello & Cohen, 1999) which in turn could affect baseline social preferences. In addition, those studies employed a paradigm in which participants were forced to choose one of three possible partners: a member of one’s immediate family, a recent acquaintance, or a book author. This ipsative method may yield different decision-making than the method used in the present study, which included many possible partners and was not forced-choice. These findings align with other studies of self-regulatory fatigue and choice not only because fatigue affected choice, but also in the affected parameters. Choices that were expected to be more difficult and that involved higher trade-offs were affected, but choices that were expected to be easier and that involved smaller trade-offs were not, and neither were choice parameters such as time spent choosing (Pocheptsova et al., 2009; Vohs et al., 2008; Wang et al., 2010). The findings also expand on extant studies in that the domain of choice was extended from consumer products to social partners; older adults were a specific population of interest; and fatigue affected context-dependent choice, with the context being time perspective.
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In addition, these findings contradict previous assertions that older adults are insensitive to self-regulatory fatigue because they do not have the “incomplete development of the prefrontal cortex” characteristic of younger adults (Dahm et al., 2011, p. 4). However, in the study on which that conclusion was based, younger and older adults did not differ in their performance (an autobiographical memory task) after self-regulatory fatigue, but older adults underperformed relative to younger adults in the control conditions. Therefore, failure to detect self-regulatory fatigue among older adults may have been due to a floor effect on the test task (Dahm et al., 2011). Although robustness of the effect of experimentally induced self-regulatory fatigue has been called into question (e.g., Carter, Kofler, Forster, & McCullough, 2015; Carter & McCullough, 2014), conclusions that the effect does not exist may be “premature” on both theoretical and methodological grounds (Hagger & Charzisarantis, 2014, p. 298; Inzlicht, Gervais, & Berkman, 2015). Recent theorizing about and empirical evidence for self-regulatory fatigue recognizes that the effects of selfregulatory effort on behavior and physiology are not uniform and are affected by the individual’s self-regulatory resources, motivation, and perception of task importance (e.g., Agtrap, Wright, Mlyniski, Hammad, & Blackledge, 2016; Evans, Boggero, & Segerstrom, 2015; Inzlicht & Schmeichel, 2012; Vohs, Baumeister, & Schmeichel, 2012). Interpersonal tasks such as the present study’s social tasks may engage older adults especially to a greater degree than intrapersonal tasks such as memory tasks, providing a better context in which to investigate fatigue (Hess, 2014).
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The present study maximized internal validity in social choice, time perspective, and selfregulatory fatigue by employing validated experimental manipulations; however, it should be recognized that these manipulations have limited external validity. Further studies that extend these findings to more naturalistic contexts, perhaps examining real social choices, perceived time remaining in life, and individual differences in chronic self-regulatory fatigue, are needed.
Conclusion
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The ability to modify social choices based on time perspective is important for the maintenance of social well-being and avoidance of social strain. When experiencing selfregulatory fatigue, people made less regulated social choices that were less well aligned with time perspective. Older and younger adults were affected similarly, suggesting that clinical and psychosocial issues stemming from self-regulatory fatigue may be present throughout the lifespan. However, this effect of fatigue may be particularly relevant for people who experience chronic self-regulatory fatigue as a consequence of physical pain, poverty, or cognitive deficits, all of which are more likely to affect older than younger adults. Furthermore, older adults, compared with younger adults, may put more value on the emotional wellbeing that is often a byproduct of adaptive social choices. These findings highlight the importance of addressing factors that increase the risk for self-regulatory fatigue in older adults and have implications for promoting successful aging.
Supplementary Material Refer to Web version on PubMed Central for supplementary material.
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Acknowledgments This research was supported by grants from the National Institute of Aging (AG026307-R01, AG033629-K02, AG048692-F31, AG048697-F31, AG028383-P30).
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Preference for close vs. knowledgeable social partners as a function of time perspective (control vs. time-limited) and self-regulatory fatigue (low vs. high) in Study 1 with younger adults. Model estimates (lower values = greater preference) on which the figure is based are shown at bottom.
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Preference for close vs. knowledgeable social partners as a function of time perspective (control vs. time-limited) and self-regulatory fatigue (low vs. high) in Study 2 with older adults (top panel) and younger adults (bottom panel). Model estimates (lower values = greater preference) on which the figure is based are shown at bottom.
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Table 1
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Study 1 multilevel model results predicting social preference (standardized pile rank) from the card-sorting task, ranging from 0 = highest preference to 1 = lowest preference Fixed effects
Effect coding (1 vs. 0)
Intercept
γ
SE
p
.080
.036
.027
.404
.053
