Older adults have difficulties with both thinking skills and understanding emotions. Some people think that trouble with emotions is because of trouble with thinking skills. In this study, 47 young and 40 older adults did tasks to test their thinking and social skills. Older adults did worse on all tasks. Thinking skills like memory and intelligence predicted how well they did on tasks about emotions and understanding others' thoughts. But even after considering thinking skills, older adults still struggled more than young adults. This suggests that while some brain areas for thinking and social skills overlap, they also work separately and decline at different rates as we age.