Wah perfect answer for the fix i got into awhile back ... got this from the Life-Span Development textbook.

SOCIOEMOTIONAL SELECTIVITY THEORY

This theory states that older adults deliberately withdraw from social contact with individuals peripheral to their lives while they maintain or increase contact with close friends and family members with whom they have had enjoyable relationships. This selective narrowing of social interaction maximizes positive emotional experiences and minimizes emotional risks as individuals become older.

It also focuses on the types of goals(sounds familiar?) that individuals are motivated to achieve. It states that two important classes of goals are 1)knowledge-related and 2)emotional. This theory emphasizes that the trajectory of motivation for knowledge-related goals starts relatively high in the early years of life, peaking in adolescence and early adulthood, and then declining in middle and late adulthood.

The emotional trajectory is high during infancy and early childhood, declines from middle childhood through early adulthood, and increases in middle and late adulthood.

One of the main reasons given for these changing trajectories in knowledge-related and emotional-related goals involves the perception of TIME. When time is perceived as open-ended, as it is when individuals are younger, people are more strongly motivated to pursue information, even at the cost of emotional satisfaction. But as older adults perceive that they have less time left in their lives, they are motivated to spend more time pursuing emotional satisfaction.