Exploring the Effect of Time Horizon Perspective on Persuasion: Focusing on Both Biological and Embodied Aging

Ahreem Ahn and Dongwon Min
Additional contact information
Ahreem Ahn: Department of Marketing, Dankook University, Yongin 16890, Korea
Dongwon Min: Department of Marketing, Dankook University, Yongin 16890, Korea

Sustainability, 2018, vol. 10, issue 12, 1-15

Abstract: According to socioemotional selectivity theory (SST), aging influences information processing style depending on the time horizon perspective (THP). In detail, older adults who perceived time as limited prefer emotional to factual messages, whereas younger adults who believed time to be expansive show the opposite pattern. When individuals pursue a specific goal, they tend to process goal-relevant information in more detail, which in turn evaluates factual messages positively. We investigated the moderating effect of goal pursuit on the relationship between biological aging and persuasion in October 2016 (Experiment 1). Results showed that both older and younger adults were more favorable toward factual (vs. emotional) messages when they pursue a goal. Experiment 2, conducted in March 2017, examined whether embodied aging affects persuasion. The results indicated that younger adults with embodied aging did not show a similar persuasion pattern with actual older adults, while embodiment studies demonstrated that younger adults with embodied aging act like older adults. That means that only THP changes the angle leading to processing. In the final experiment, conducted in November 2018, younger adults primed with limited THP preferred emotional to factual messages, which was similar to actual older adults’ responses. Moreover, we showed that emotional attachment mediated the effect of message types on the persuasion of younger adults with limited THP.

Keywords: aging; time horizon perspective; message type; persuasion; goal pursuit; emotional attachment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/12/4375/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/12/4375/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:10:y:2018:i:12:p:4375-:d:185056

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().