Abstract
Socioemotional selectivity theory predicts that as the end of life approaches, goals and resources that provide rewards in the moment become more important than those which promise rewards in the future. The present study tested whether concern in two resource domains - current close relationships and future finances - differentially affected psychological health in the context of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a life-limiting disease. ALS patients (N = 102) and their spouses (N = 100) each reported their loneliness, financial worry, and psychological health every 3 months for up to 18 months. In multilevel dyadic models, patients and spouses had similar levels of financial worry and loneliness. Both patients and spouses had poorer psychological health with higher loneliness, but only spouses had poorer psychological health with higher financial worry. In addition, significant interactions with age and disease severity indicated that older spouses were more similar to patients in that they were more affected by loneliness than were younger spouses. Patients with less severe disease were more similar to spouses in that they were more affected by financial worry than patients with more severe disease. The results provide good support for socioemotional selectivity theory’s implications for psychological health. Furthermore, because patients and caregivers share many aspects of the disease but only patients confront life limitation, the dyadic approach provides a strong test of the theory.