https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0424-6687
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ABSTRACT
Background
Age-related declines in adult affective theory of mind (AToM) have been discovered. However, AToM measures have not accounted for emotional state complexity involved in AToM. Measures have also not accounted for different types of relationships – friends versus strangers – for which AToM is employed, which is important considering the limited social networks of aging adults.
Objective
We address these issues and examine the emotion complexity, social-relatedness, and contextual relevance in AToM across adult ages (18–89 years) using a new task and two well-established measures.
Results
The new task displayed good structural fit and internal construct validity. Overall, an age-related decline in AToM was found along with an interaction between age and emotion complexity. For all ages, AToM performance was best for complex emotions. However, as age increased, there was more rapid decline in AToM for more complex emotions than for less complex ones. Surprisingly, AToM performance for strangers was better than for social companions.
Conclusion
The findings suggest age-related AToM declines are more nuanced than previously understood given that adult age differences are related to emotional state complexity. They indicate that the emotion complexity levels of basic, complex, and self-conscious should be included in AToM assessments. Implications for AToM tasks and development are discussed.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Reporting and Availability of Data, Code, and Materials
The authors disclose that all measures used, data collected, conditions, and all data exclusions and exclusionary criteria have been reported in this paper and the data in this manuscript has not been reported in any other article publication. The dataset, code, and materials are available on the Open Science Framework via this link: https://osf.io/y93sn/?view_only=127e3e43a4c449b59a1cdfc7b340e841