Age differences in social preferences among Taiwanese and mainland Chinese: The role of perceived time

Socioemotional selectivity theory holds that as people recognize the inevit able constraint of time imposed by mortality, their social goals change, mo tivating them to limit social contacts to those with whom they are emotiona lly close. This theory was tested among Taiwanese and Mainland Chinese. As predicted, results showed that older adults (aged 60-90 years) in both cult ures were more likely than younger adults (aged 18-30 years) to prefer fami liar social partners who were most likely to provide emotionally close soci al interactions. Mainland Chinese, who as a group have shorter actuarial li fe expectancy, were more likely to prefer familiar social partners than wer e Taiwanese. These age and cultural differences were eliminated when differ ences in perceived time were statistically controlled for.