Journals of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences

cite as: J Gerontol B Psychol Sci Soc Sci, 2017, Vol. 72, No. 1, 61–70
doi:10.1093/geronb/gbw056
Advance Access publication May 27, 2016

Special Issue: Cognitive Aging: Special Article

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Cognitive Aging in a Social and Affective Context:
Advances Over the Past 50 Years
Elizabeth A. Kensinger1 and Angela H. Gutchess2
Department of Psychology, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. 2Department of Psychology, Brandeis University,
1

Waltham, Massachusetts.
Correspondence should be addressed to Elizabeth A. Kensinger, PhD, Department of Psychology, Boston College, McGuinn Hall, Room 300,
140 Commonwealth Avenue, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467. E-mail: Elizabeth.kensinger@bc.edu.

Received February 2, 2016; Accepted April 27, 2016

Decision Editor: Nicole Anderson, PhD

Abstract
Objective: This review contemplates the recent consideration of social and affective factors within the study of cognitive
aging and examines the multiple ways in which these factors intersect.
Methods: The article briefly reviews the models applied to cognitive aging and considers how they can inform the under-
standing of socioaffective aging. It then discusses the ways in which socioaffective and cognitive abilities intersect.
Results: Models of cognitive aging can fruitfully be applied to socioaffective aging, although with some points of diver-
gence. The interactions between cognitive and socioaffective aging are multifaceted and include bidirectional influences.
Discussion: Socioaffective domains may preserve function within cognitive domains in part because socioaffective process-
ing provides a rich source of environmental support and links to motivated cognition. The authors outline future directions
related to these hypotheses.
Keywords: Affect—Age—Cognition—Context—Emotion—Emotion regulation—Social interaction

It was relatively recently within the 50-year history of cog-
nitive aging that social and affective abilities began to be
considered as relevant factors. This transformation arose
in parallel with developments within the study of cogni-
tive aging and cognitive psychology more generally. Within
cognitive aging, theories increasingly embraced the multi-
faceted and varied nature of age-related changes. Ideas of
“successful aging” (Havighurst, 1961) began to incorporate
concepts of social engagement as well as cognitive function
(Rowe & Kahn, 1987), and research confirmed that social
and affective factors such as life satisfaction (e.g., Waldinger,
Cohen, Schulz, & Crowell, 2015) or loneliness (e.g., Wilson
et al., 2007) could influence the speed of age-related cogni-
tive decline. Within cognitive psychology, there was a shift
away from thinking of emotion and cognition either as non-
intersecting domains or as opponents and toward thinking
about synergies and interreliance of the systems (e.g., Dolan,
2002; Gross & Barrett, 2011). In this context, it began to be
appreciated that many aspects of social and affective func-
tions remained relatively preserved with age (see Scheibe
& Carstensen, 2010) and that these socioaffective domains
could convey benefits to older adults’ cognitive function (see
Kensinger & Gutchess, 2015).
In this review, we first discuss how the types of models
typically applied to cognitive aging—models of resource
limitation, compensation, and domain-specific deficits—
can be used to understand socioaffective aging. We then
review the myriad ways in which socioaffective function
can be intertwined with cognitive function. For instance,
social and affective information can provide a rich and per-
vasive form of environmental support and can serve to cue
older adults to relevant aspects of the environment. We end
the review by briefly discussing why we have considered
social and affective factors together, and we note some of

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62
the open questions that we believe will be fruitful for future
research.
Applying Theories of Cognitive Aging to
Social and Affective Domains
Although theories of cognitive aging are multifaceted (see
Salthouse, 2010), the majority can be clustered into three
categories: those that focus on the availability of resources
(both within and across domains), those that focus on com-
pensatory strategies, and those that focus on domain-spe-
cific areas of loss. In this section, we briefly review these
three categories as they have been applied to cognitive aging
and assess the extent to which they have been useful in the
understanding of social and affective functions in older age.
Resource Models
The field of cognitive aging research has emphasized the
importance of resource limitations in accounting for age-
related differences in performance on cognitive tasks.
Discussed resources have included processing efficiency
(e.g., Salthouse, 1996), attention (e.g., Craik & Byrd,
1982), executive function (e.g., West, 1996), and inhibition
(e.g., Hasher & Zacks, 1988). Research has also identified
contextual factors that can influence the availability of cog-
nitive resources, such as time of day (May & Hasher, 1998).
Resource models have also been important to the study
of social and affective processes, with some theories propos-
ing that socioaffective losses with age stem from declines in
cognitive resources. Although socioemotional content can
minimize some age deficits in cognitive abilities, such as
attention or memory (e.g., Comblain, D’Argembeau, & Van
der Linden, 2005), resource models could explain why the
deficits are rarely eliminated. For instance, even for social
and affective stimuli, older adults often remember fewer
stimuli while also committing more memory errors than
younger adults (e.g., Aizpurua, Garcia-Bajos, & Migueles,
2011). The utility of resource models can also be extended
to abilities that tend to improve with age. As one exam-
ple, older adults possess equal or better emotion regulation
ability than younger adults, yet this affective ability can be
predicted by levels of fluid cognition, such as processing
speed and working memory (Opitz, Lee, Gross, & Urry,
2014). Furthermore, variability in socioaffective function-
ing among older adults has been linked to differences in
the availability of resources. For example, older adults with
fewer cognitive resources are more likely to stigmatize oth-
ers and find it harder to regulate their responses to stigma
(Krendl, Heatherton, & Kensinger, 2009).
Although there is some convergence in the emphasis on
resources within cognitive and socioaffective domains, other
aspects of the literatures diverge insofar as they suggest that
social and affective processing may require fewer resources.
For instance, memory for emotional and social information
Journals of Gerontology: PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCES, 2017, Vol. 72, No. 1
tends to be better preserved with age than memory for neu-
tral and nonsocial information (e.g., Cassidy & Gutchess,
2012; May, Rahhal, Berry, & Leighton, 2005). Moreover,
social and emotional information can capture attention
even when other forms of information cannot. When infor-
mation is emotionally arousing (Buchanan, Etzel, Adolphs,
& Tranel, 2006) or when it is self-relevant (Yang, Truong,
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Fuss, & Bislimovic, 2012), memory enhancements can occur
even when attention is divided. These patterns suggest that
the encoding of arousing or self-relevant information may
be prioritized, and the benefits may be expected to extend to
older adults, despite resource limitations.
Compensation
Many models, derived primarily from cognitive neurosci-
ence methods, illustrate that older adults recruit additional
resources in an attempt to address the cognitive challenges
that occur with age. For example, models such as hemispheric
asymmetry reduction in older adults (HAROLD) (Cabeza,
2002) or compensation-related utilization of neural circuits
hypothesis (CRUNCH) (Reuter-Lorenz & Cappell, 2008)
purport that older adults need to recruit additional neural
regions to support task performance, potentially at a lower
level of task difficulty than would be the case for younger
adults. The posterior–anterior shift with aging (PASA)
model explicitly identifies patterns of age-related changes
across specific regions, whereby increased frontal lobe activ-
ity occurs hand-in-hand with decreased occipital lobe activ-
ity (Davis, Dennis, Daselaar, Fleck, & Cabeza, 2008). The
Scaffolding Theory of Aging and Cognition (STAC) further
emphasizes the interplay between processes that can be
recruited to bolster cognitive performance and limitations
to the availability of resources as through disease, injury, or
individual differences as a result of nature or nurture (e.g.,
education; Park & Reuter-Lorenz, 2009).
The literature on social and affective aging converges
with cognitive research to a large extent. The PASA pattern
extends to tasks using emotional stimuli (Ford, Morris, &
Kensinger, 2014). The development of the scaffolds of the
STAC model is likely to be affected by socially and affec-
tively relevant processes (e.g., leisure activities, emotion
regulation ability; Park & Reuter-Lorenz, 2009). Affective
and social aging has additionally emphasized the potential
for older adults to allocate resources in different ways, or
to different content, than younger adults. For example,
although both age groups may desire to reduce their expe-
rience of negative emotions, younger and older adults may
use different strategies to achieve this regulation (Urry &
Gross, 2010). Whereas younger adults might employ cog-
nitive reappraisal to alter the meaning of a situation, older
adults might rely more on situation selection to remove
themselves from a situation or to look away from disturb-
ing information (Isaacowitz, Wadlinger, Goren, & Wilson,
2006). Younger and older adults also seem to differ in
the ways that they encode information relative to oneself,
Journals of Gerontology: PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCES, 2017, Vol. 72, No. 1
with older adults being more influenced by also encoding
information about another person (Gutchess et al., 2015).
Similarly, older adults tend to apply resources to process
emotional information—and particularly positive infor-
mation—in a more controlled fashion than young adults
(Mather, 2016), especially within the subset of older adults
with the most resources available (e.g., Reed, Chan, &
Mikels, 2014).
Such strategy differences across the age groups also
are possible for cognitive tasks. For example, older adults
avoid situations with high cognitive demands, such as pre-
ferring fewer choices in decision making tasks (e.g., Reed,
Mikels, & Löckenhoff, 2013), and they are more likely than
younger adults to be impacted by the meaningfulness of the
task (e.g., Hess, 2005). This tendency appears to be more
pervasive in the social and affective domains, however, and
differences in neural recruitment during cognitive tasks are
more likely to be considered to reflect discrepancies in task
difficulty or load across the age groups.
Domain-specific Versus Domain-general
Processes
Many theories of aging have focused on changes to pre-
frontal (West, 1996) and medial temporal lobe function
(e.g., Grady et al., 1995). Yet the trajectory of age-related
changes varies across different subregions (see Mather,
2016). The subregions that show the largest age-related
atrophy and disruption of function—the dorsolateral pre-
frontal cortex (e.g., MacPherson, Phillips, & Della Sala,
2002) and hippocampus (e.g., Leal & Yassa, 2015)—are
those that are tied to selective attention and memory bind-
ing, respectively, processes that undergo large age-related
decline (Gazzaley & D’Esposito, 2007; Naveh-Benjamin,
2000). By contrast, the subregions that are least affected
structurally or during active task performance by aging—
the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (e.g., Salat et al., 2005;
but see Li et al., 2015 for meta-analytic evidence that it is
overrecruited at rest) and the amygdala (e.g., Grieve, Clark,
Williams, Peduto, & Gordon, 2005)—are more strongly
connected to socioaffective function and likely explain the
age-related preservation of some aspects of affective deci-
sion making (e.g., Blanchard-Fields, 2007) and learning
(see Kensinger, 2009).
Despite the general preservation of structure and func-
tion within ventromedial prefrontal cortex and amygdala
with age, these regions may be engaged under different cir-
cumstances, or may be most strongly connected for differ-
ent stimuli. For instance, although both young and older
adults engage the medial prefrontal cortex during affec-
tive processing, the valence of information for which they
engage the region most strongly may differ. During encod-
ing, young adults tend to engage the region more strongly
for negative content than positive content, whereas older
adults tend to show the opposite valence-based pattern
(e.g., Kensinger & Leclerc, 2009), a pattern that is likely to
63
be connected to age differences in processing strategy and
resource allocation, as noted in the earlier section. During
retrieval, there may again be a valence reversal, though per-
haps not in the same direction as encoding, and age-related
changes in connectivity between the prefrontal cortex and
medial temporal lobe may support less negative emotional
memory retrieval with age (Ford et al., 2014).
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Summary
Many of the models developed for cognitive aging can
be applied to socioaffective aging. Diminished cognitive
resources often explain older adults’ difficulties in socio-
affective domains, including in the perception of facial
expressions of emotions and the regulation of responses to
stigma. Yet there are other domains in which socioaffec-
tive domains may require fewer resources or may rely more
on cognitive and neural processes that are preserved with
age, yielding pockets of preservation within socioaffective
domains. Also as occurs in cognitive domains, older adults
can compensate for some of their declines by engaging in
different processes: Just as older adults recruit more pre-
frontal regions during cognitive task performance, so do
they overrecruit frontal regions during some socioaffective
tasks. However, in socioaffective domains, these age dif-
ferences may be more likely to reflect different strategies
for how resources are allocated in older as compared with
younger adults. Overall, research illustrates many ways in
which cognitive changes with age impinge upon social and
affective abilities.
How Socioaffective Function Can Be
Intertwined With Cognitive Function
Until recently, the ways in which socioaffective aging neces-
sitates unique consideration of cognitive abilities have been
little contemplated. One example of an ability that inte-
grates the two is wisdom. Long associated with aging, wis-
dom not only represents the accumulation of knowledge
and cognitive expertise but is also an emotional and social
process (Baltes, 1993). Recent research identifies some of
the ways in which older adults achieve gains in wisdom
over younger and middle-aged adults, despite losses in fluid
intelligence. Their reasoning about social dilemmas and
conflicts reflects more awareness of multiple perspectives,
compromise, and limitations of knowledge (Grossmann
et al., 2010). Although wisdom is one example of the inter-
connection of cognitive and socioaffective abilities, here we
outline other ways in which the two domains can influence
one another and become inherently intertwined.
How Might Socioaffective Factors Influence
Cognitive Ability?
We have already alluded to the fact that social and emotional
factors have the ability to impact what is remembered from
64
a scene or narrative or the way that attention is oriented
or sustained. These effects of emotional content remain
robust into older age. For example, older adults often ben-
efit from emotional framing of information (e.g., Mikels
et al., 2010) and perform better on tasks that ask them to
remember socioaffective context rather than factual con-
tent (see Kensinger, 2009). Older adults also are more likely
to sustain attention on emotional relative to neutral infor-
mation and to remember that information, particularly if it
is of positive valence (see meta-analysis by Reed, Chan, &
Mikels, 2014).
Although the emotional influences on cognition are
often beneficial—that is, emotion enhances attention and
memory—the nature of the effects can depend on the task
requirements. For instance, emotional content can be dis-
tracting and can impede ongoing task performance (Iordan,
Dolcos, & Dolcos, 2013). Similarly, emotional information
can be remembered at the expense of nonemotional content
in older as well as younger adults (Kensinger, 2009).
Social influences can also exert both beneficial and det-
rimental impacts on older adults’ cognitive ability. Larger
social networks tend to be associated with better cogni-
tive function and to a lessened likelihood of developing
dementia (e.g., Wilson et al., 2007). Even shorter-term
social interactions can convey benefits to cognitive func-
tion. For example, studies of collaborative memory have
revealed that discussing information with others can boost
memory accuracy (Clark, Hori, Putnam, & Martin, 2000),
even when the information consists of emotional content
(Kensinger, Choi, Murray, & Rajaram, in press). Although
there is relatively little research extending these findings
to older adult populations, there is evidence that social
interaction can mitigate some of the learning and memory
deficits of older adults (Derksen et al., 2015) and that older
adults show similar effects of collaborative memory as
younger adults (Henkel & Rajaram, 2011).
There may be some contexts, however, in which social
influences on cognition are mitigated with age. Perhaps
because of perspective-taking difficulties, older adults can
be less likely than young adults to provide the information
needed to co-ordinate a shared representation with another
individual (Healey & Grossman, 2016); this may make it
harder for older adults to benefit when the same informa-
tion is not available to all collaborators. Moreover, if social
interactions remind older adults of common stereotypes
related to aging (i.e., induce stereotype threat; Lamont,
Swift, & Abrams, 2015), cognitive processes including
memory can suffer. The mechanisms underlying this phe-
nomenon continue to be investigated. It has been proposed
that stereotype threat disrupts controlled processes imple-
mented during retrieval such that older adults are more
impaired at distinguishing true from false memories if they
are reminded of memory decline with aging just before they
retrieve information (e.g., Krendl, Ambady, & Kensinger,
2015). It also has been suggested that stereotype threat
induces a prevention focus in older adults, whereby they
Journals of Gerontology: PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCES, 2017, Vol. 72, No. 1
seek to avoid negative outcomes (i.e., performing poorly)
rather than to achieve positive outcomes (i.e., performing
well; e.g., Barber, Mather, & Gatz, 2015).
The evidence reviewed demonstrates that when older
adults engage with social and affective information, this
can influence their ability to attend to information, to learn
and retrieve information, and to work with information so
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as to make decisions. Although in many cases, the influ-
ences are beneficial, a point that we will return to later
in this review, there can also be social and affective influ-
ences that impair older adults’ cognitive function. This can
be particularly prone to occur if the information depletes
older adults’ processing resources, as may occur both when
emotional information serves as a distractor and when
social interactions evoke stereotype threat.
How Might Cognitive Changes With Aging
Influence Emotion or Social Processing?
Cognitive declines have been linked to processes as var-
ied as emotional experiences and thinking about oth-
ers. Emotional complexity is reduced with age, which is
thought to reflect reduced cognitive capacity—particularly
fluid intelligence—after late midlife (Labouvie-Vief, Diehl,
Jain, & Zhang, 2007). Not all aspects of emotional com-
plexity decline with age, however; the experience of mixed
emotions, such as feeling happy with a tinge of sadness,
increases slightly with age (Schneider & Stone, 2015), sug-
gesting that emotional complexity is not entirely deter-
mined by the availability of cognitive resources with age.
A number of studies have explored the contribution of cog-
nition to theory of mind, the ability to represent the mental
state of another individual which is generally impaired with
age (Moran, 2013). Cognitive abilities such as executive
function partially account for deficits on verbal story tasks,
although some evidence indicates that crystallized intelli-
gence, such as vocabulary, can protect against declines with
age. Although some aspects of theory of mind are linked
to cognitive declines, the affective component seems to
be distinct and is more preserved with age (e.g., Phillips,
MacLean, & Allen, 2002).
Cognitive ability also may affect the ways in which
perceivers extract information from others’ faces with
age, although evidence is mixed. Older adults experience
some difficulty recognizing basic emotions, with anger
and sadness posing the most difficulty. Changes to specific
neuropsychological systems with age, rather than greater
deficits at higher levels of difficulty that might be predicted
by resource models, have been suggested to account for this
pattern of emotion recognition deficits with age (Ruffman,
Henry, Livingstone, & Phillips, 2008). Some of these dif-
ficulties may reflect changes with age in the ways attention
is allocated to different parts of the face, with older adults
attending to the eyes less than young, although cognition
does not entirely account for the changes with age (e.g.,
Murphy & Isaacowitz, 2010). Age-related changes extend
Journals of Gerontology: PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCES, 2017, Vol. 72, No. 1
to additional social inferences about others. Although
younger and older adults largely agree on which faces look
trustworthy versus untrustworthy, older adults do not rate
the most untrustworthy faces as negatively as do younger
adults and this alteration in ratings is most pronounced
for the older adults with lower levels of cognitive ability
(Zebrowitz, Franklin, Hillman, & Boc, 2013). Although
age-related changes in these abilities do not seem to boil
down to simple changes in cognitive function, reductions in
fluid abilities appear to make some contribution.
Impairments in making inferences about others’ emo-
tions, thoughts, or character could have widespread effects
on interpersonal interactions. Representing others’ minds,
having complex emotional reactions, and correctly iden-
tifying others’ emotional states could enhance relation-
ship building through empathy for others. Cues of threat
or character could provide important information about
who is deserving of trust in financial or occupational mat-
ters. Interestingly, the use of naturalistic, dynamic stimuli
may benefit older adults. For example, older adults exhibit
advantages over younger adults in differentiating smile
types in dynamic faces (Murphy, Lehrfeld, & Isaacowitz,
2010), in contrast to static faces. These discrepancies
highlight the importance of translating research from the
laboratory to naturalistic settings, in order to assess how
older adults benefit from relevant experiences and familiar
contexts.
Social and Affective Processing Provide
Contextual Support
Although the two prior sections have highlighted bidirec-
tional interactions between socioaffective domains and
cognitive domains, some advantageous and some disad-
vantageous, it is important to note one overarching reason
why social and affective domains may convey benefits in
aging: their potential to operate as forms of environmen-
tal support. Environmental support refers to the ability
to draw on rich contextual information to improve per-
formance by reducing cognitive resource demands (Craik
& Byrd, 1982). Older adults can be influenced by context
more than young adults, for abilities ranging from lan-
guage to memory (e.g., Gutchess et al., 2007; Wingfield,
Amichetti, & Lash, 2015) to social perception (e.g. Noh &
Isaacowitz, 2013). Because socioemotional context is prior-
itized throughout old age (Scheibe & Carstensen, 2010), it
is likely to continue to operate as a form of environmental
support for cognition in older adults.
We have already described some of the evidence that
socioemotional context can provide environmental sup-
port for memory, and such examples abound. For instance,
framing information in terms of interpersonal and affective
contexts can equate younger and older adults’ performance
(e.g., May et al., 2005), emotional reactions can increase the
perceived vividness and confidence in older adults’ memo-
ries (Comblain et al., 2005), and working collaboratively
65
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Figure 1. Overview of social and affective influences on cognition
(upper arrows) and cognitive influences on social and affective pro-
cessing (lower arrows). This figure depicts examples of influences that
show age-related changes; these examples are discussed in more detail
within the text. This is not an exhaustive list, and iterative and bidirec-
tional influences can also occur.
with a long-term intimate partner improves older adults’
memories in some contexts that would typically be asso-
ciated with collaborative memory inhibition (Harris, Keil,
Sutton, Barnier, & McIlwain, 2011). More generally, con-
necting with information in a socially or emotionally rele-
vant manner can provide scaffolds to improve older adults’
memories, such as when information is made personally
relevant, be it through imagining interacting with another
individual (Cassidy & Gutchess, 2012) or remembering
positive impressions of others who are similar to oneself
(Leshikar, Park, & Gutchess, 2015).
Summary
Socioaffective function and cognitive function have bidi-
rectional influences (as shown in Figure 1). Often, older
adults’ cognitive performance is better within socioaf-
fective domains compared with other domains, in part
because of the environmental support provided by these
domains. However, there can be instances when the pres-
ence of social or affective information or goals can impede
older adults’ cognitive function, often by distracting them
from the cognitive task. Moreover, individual differences in
socioaffective ability can sometimes be explained by differ-
ences in cognitive ability, suggesting that some socioaffec-
tive abilities can rely on successful deployment of cognitive
resources.
Conclusions and Emerging Themes
The study of social and affective aging largely converges
with the cognitive aging literature in that there is a mix-
ture of decline, preservation, and gains in abilities with
age, although the socioemotional literature may reveal
more patterns of preservation (e.g., forming first impres-
sions) and even gains (e.g., emotion regulation, wisdom)
66 Journals of Gerontology: PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCES, 2017, Vol. 72, No. 1

than occur in cognitive domains. What may be most prom-

ising for future advances is the appreciation of potential
strategy differences (e.g., prioritizing positive information,
adopting different emotion regulation strategies) with age.
There can be multiple reasons for such strategy differences.
Motivational shifts with aging may often drive the strat-
egy differences (Box 1A), but age differences in strategy
Box 1. Future Directions
A. Social, affective, and cognitive aging: Inter-
sections with motivated cognition
Motivational shifts can influence the priority of socioaffec-
tive factors (e.g., avoiding negative affect, sustaining social
connections) and cognitive factors (e.g., attending to details,

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use could arise for many reasons—reflecting compensation, remembering content).
or differences in subjective effort (e.g., Westbrook, Kester,
& Braver, 2013)—and determining the reason why strat- •• How do motivational shifts with age influence the bidirectional
egy differences occur will be an important focus for future connections between socioaffective and cognitive domains?
research. Better delineating the similarities and differences •• To what extent do motivational influences draw on reward
in how younger and older adults approach tasks may be systems typically implicated in motivated behavior?
particularly important for the study of neural correlates of •• What can be learned by considering age changes in moti-
behavior; in many cases, tasks have not been sufficiently vated cognition as changes at the intersection of socioaf-
constrained and so age differences could reflect either strat- fective and cognitive domains?
egy differences or different routes of implementation for
the same strategy.
Although cognitive theories have shaped thinking about
social and affective processes, there is a dearth of research
directly tackling the interface of these domains. The poten-
tial for social and affective information to improve cog-
nitive performance has been demonstrated, however the
role of resources, mechanisms for compensation, and
domain generality versus specificity have not been suffi-
ciently probed through the use of an individual differences
approach or manipulation of available resources (Box B. Using social and affective manipulations to
1B). There also has been relatively little attention paid to probe cognitive abilities
whether social and affective factors ought to be considered Prior research has given hints that socioemotional resources may
members of one, shared domain—with shared mechanisms affect how cognitive tasks are performed, such as when emotional
that change with age—or distinguished into emotion-spe- information is held in working memory, yet we are far from a full
cific and social-specific domains that may show divergent understanding of these types of interactions.
trajectories with age or different intersections with cogni-
tive aging (Box 1C). •• How do individual differences in socioemotional ability, or
Finally, the study of social and affective domains has socioemotional resources, influence the way that cognitive
highlighted the importance of context. Some cognitive processes unfold?
work has considered this factor, but that research largely C. The intersection of social and affective factors
has focused on the framing of the information itself (e.g., Social and affective factors are often intertwined: Emotions
memory for a word in the context of a sentence). Recent convey socially relevant information, and social interactions
work has highlighted the role of the mindset of the individ- often trigger emotions. Moreover, both convey environmental
ual observer, such as focusing on information or emotion support. However, there are some clear points of divergence
(Mikels et al., 2010), and also the broader social context between the two in their neural underpinnings and behavioral
in which the individual operates (e.g., social network, cul- outcomes.
tural stereotypes of aging). Context may be so important,
in part, because of older adults’ reliance on environmental •• When do social and affective factors interact with cogni-
support; social and affective domains may provide particu- tive ones via overlapping rather than distinct mechanisms?
larly rich environmental support because these are domains
in which older adults have acquired expertise. Older adults
have accumulated rich experiences dealing with others over
their lifetimes, which could enhance task performance or
engender wisdom (e.g., Grossmann et al., 2010). Indeed,
older adults were overrepresented in the group deemed to
be wisest in early research on wisdom (see review by Baltes,
1993). It is possible that this life experience could protect
older adults in everyday contexts, and this has been sug-
gested to be the case in the domain of fraud vulnerability.
Whereas some laboratory research indicates that cognitive
Journals of Gerontology: PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCES, 2017, Vol. 72, No. 1
decline could make older adults more prone to victimiza-
tion, others have argued that there is not actual evidence
that older adults fall prey to consumer fraud more than
other age groups (Ross, Grossmann, & Schryer, 2014).
Future Directions
Future directions for research into social and affective
aging are likely to follow the trends of the cognitive and
cognitive neuroscience literatures to some extent, while
simultaneously facing challenges unique to the socioemo-
tional domain. As in the field of cognitive aging, growth
in multimodal approaches will contribute to a rich under-
standing of the intersection of different levels of analy-
sis, integrating functional and structural brain imaging
methods with physiological measures such as stress reac-
tivity and heart rate variability in order to understand
how these factors together relate to socioemotional aging.
The increasing interest in uncovering biological mecha-
nisms, including the contribution of genes and epigenetics,
will extend to social and affective abilities, particularly
through the lens of a lifespan approach. For example,
the role of early life adversity in emotional and cogni-
tive development has been a fertile area of investigation
(Hackman, Farah, & Meaney, 2010), as has been the
role of intelligence in childhood on cognitive outcomes
with aging (Deary et al., 2012). The intersection of these
areas should lead to investigations of ways in which fac-
tors such as temperament, loneliness, social networks, and
resources during childhood impact social and emotional
abilities in older adulthood. Although greater interaction
between research on human and animal models will be
needed to establish causal links between early life experi-
ences and late life outcomes, methods such as pharma-
cology (e.g., manipulating dopamine levels) and neural
stimulation (e.g., temporarily enhancing or disrupting the
function of a specific neural region) are underutilized in
the study of aging and can provide initial steps in advanc-
ing understanding of causality.
Intervention and training studies are another route to
establish causality and illustrate routes to successful aging.
The approach thus far has focused largely on physical and
cognitive interventions (e.g., exercise, video games). Social
factors are likely to interact with cognitive and physical
ones, particularly in everyday contexts, and so it may be
most meaningful to study these factors in conjunction (see
Hertzog, Kramer, Wilson, & Lindenberger, 2008 for dis-
cussion). Few studies have focused on social and affective
factors in isolation, largely employing longitudinal stud-
ies of behavior. These studies indicate some links between
higher levels of social activity and engagement and reduced
levels of cognitive decline with age (e.g., Bassuk, Glass, &
Berkman, 1999). Lifestyle and personality factors that may
impact affect, such as practicing yoga or meditation (Gard
et al., 2014), can enhance neural connectivity, a measure of
how coherently brain regions operate together as a network.
67
A recent study has illustrated the potential to improve con-
nectivity of the default mode network through a training
program employing tasks known to engage this network
(De Marco et al., 2016). Given the overlap of this network
with regions activated during social tasks, this finding may
have broad implications for enhancing the functioning of
this network, and potentially improving performance on
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/psychsocgerontology/article/72/1/61/2632108 by Universiteit van Amsterdam user on 15 January 2024
socially relevant tasks.
Although much additional research is needed to under-
stand the complex interplay between social and affective
factors and cognitive ones, the past 50 years have repre-
sented an exciting period with the emerging acknowledg-
ment of the importance of these factors. We anticipate
that the next decades will continue to be a fertile time to
investigate the questions we have outlined here, including
the potential to identify unique trajectories of the effects of
aging on social and affective abilities, as well as to uncover
the potential for these domains to enhance and inhibit cog-
nition in the face of aging.
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