Centre for Policy on Ageing



Age differences in social preferences among Taiwanese and mainland Chinese — the role of perceived time
Author(s)	Helene H Fung, Phillina Lai, Rita Ng
Journal title	Psychology and Aging, vol 16, no 2, June 2001
Pages	pp 351-356
Keywords	Family relationships ; Social interaction ; Attitude ; Age groups [elderly] ; Young adults [20-25] ; Correlation ; Taiwan ; China.
Annotation	Socio-emotional selectivity theory holds that as people recognise the inevitable constraints of time imposed by mortality, their social goals change, motivating them to limit social contacts to those with whom they are emotionally close. This theory was tested with Taiwanese and mainland Chinese. As predicted, results showed that older people (age 60+) in both cultures were more likely than younger adults (age 18-30) to prefer familiar social partners who were most likely to provide emotionally close social interactions. Mainland Chinese, who as a group have shorter actuarial life expectancy, were more than likely to prefer familiar social patterns than were Taiwanese. These age and cultural differences were eliminated when differences in perceived time were statistically controlled for. (RH).
Accession Number	CPA-020422002 A
Classmark	DS:SJ: TMA: DP: BB: SD6: 49: 7DP: 7DC
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...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing.