Motivation and social-cognitive abilities in older adults: Convergent evidence from self-report measures and cardiovascular reactivity.

ABSTRACT: Recently, some authors have suggested that age-related impairments in social-cognitive abilities-emotion recognition (ER) and theory of mind (ToM)-may be explained in terms of reduced motivation and effort mobilization in older adults. We examined performance on ER and ToM tasks, as well as corresponding control tasks, experimentally manipulating self-involvement. Sixty-one older adults and 57 young adults were randomly assigned to either a High or Low self-involvement condition. In the first condition, self-involvement was raised by telling participants were told that good task performance was associated with a number of positive, personally relevant social outcomes. Motivation was measured with both subjective (self-report questionnaire) and objective (systolic blood pressure reactivity-

SUBMITTER: Ceccato I 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6619662 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature