What Does It Mean to Grow Older in a Collectivistic Culture? Socioemotional Aging among Hong Kong Chinese

Professor Helene H. Fung
Department of Psychology
The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Abstract

Population aging is more pronounced in East Asian societies than in Western societies. Yet, much of the existing literature on socioemotional aging is based on studies conducted with North Americans or Europeans. Socioemotional selectivity theory explains socioemotional aging in terms of older people's greater motivation to derive emotional meaning from life. To the extent that cultures differ in what they consider to be emotionally meaningful, we would expect to find cultural differences in socioemotional aging. Study 1 compared age differences in personality (the Big Five, interpersonal relatedness) among Canadians and Hong Kong Chinese. Study 2 examined age differences in social network characteristics among Germans and Hong Kong Chinese. Studies 3 & 4 examined attention (eyetracking) and memory among younger and older Americans and Hong Kong Chinese. Taken together, findings from these studies revealed what it meant to grow older in a collectivistic culture: Compared with Westerners, Hong Kong Chinese were more likely (1) to endorse interpersonal relatedness as a personality trait, (2) to increase the number of close social partners and to retain peripheral social partners, and (3) to show attention and memory biases for negative emotions such as fear and anger over positive emotions such as happiness, as they grew older.