Age Differences in Adults' Emotional Motivations for Exposure to Films

Abstract

Participants in three age ranges (younger adults, 18–25, N = 188; middle adults, 26–49, N = 92; and older adults, 50 and over, N = 93) completed a questionnaire assessing motivations for everyday affective experiences as well as affective motivations for film viewing. In line with Arnett's (2000) view of emerging adulthood and Carstensen, Isaacowitz, and Charles's (1999) theory of socioemotional selectivity, younger adults expressed the greatest interest in experiencing negative emotions in their everyday lives, in viewing dark, creepy, or violent content, and in viewing media to escape boredom and for amusement; older adults were most interested in experiencing emotional stability and in viewing films with uplifting, heartwarming content. Results suggest that lifespan differences may help explain the allure of hedonically negative programming among some groups.

Notes

^a All motivation variables were recorded on scales ranging from 1 to 5; all other scales ranged from 1 to 7.

^b Descriptive statistics for the teen affective motivations are for middle-aged and older participants only.

^a All motivation scales were recorded on scales ranging from 1 to 5; all other scales ranged from 1 to 7.

∗∗ p < .01;

∗∗∗ p < .001.

∗ p < .05.

1. Some research on conceptualizations of wellbeing has employed the Aristotelian terms “hedonism” versus “eudaimonia” to refer to happiness based on pleasure versus happiness based on meaningfulness or greater insight (Ryan & Deci, 2001; Waterman, 1993).

2. Socioemotional selectivity theory suggests that young adults (relative to older adults) are more tolerant of negative emotions and experiences, whereas Arnett's description of emerging adults raises the possibility that young adults sometimes actively pursue negative experiences. Unfortunately, our measures do not really distinguish between tolerance as opposed to enjoyment or pursuit of negative affect, an issue that deserves further consideration. We are grateful to an anonymous reviewer for pointing this out.

3. We did not expect age group differences in “fun” and boredom-related motivations and attractions to comedic content to be mediated by interest in positive emotional stability given that these motives are expected to be lower among older adults and that interest in positive emotional stability is expected to be higher among older adults. Nor did we expect them to be mediated by interest in exploring negative affect in everyday affect, given that recent research on developmental changes in emotion suggests that positive and negative affect tend to be two separate continuums rather than opposite ends of a single continuum (Carstensen et al. 2000; Charles et al. 2001). While there are some types of humor that may reflect underlying negative affect (the malicious glee in someone else's misfortune known as schadenfreude, or hostile comedy that derogates out groups), we did not ask specifically about interest in these types of humor. We are grateful to an anonymous reviewer for raising this intriguing point.

4. All MANOVAs and ANOVAs reported in this article employed Type III sums of squares. Likewise, all means and standard errors are based on estimated marginal means.