A Cross-Cultural Examination of the Positivity Effect in Memory: United States vs. China

Abstract

Many studies conducted in the United States (U.S.) have documented a positivity effect in aging-a tendency for older adults to remember more positive than negative information in comparison to young adults. Despite this cognitive emotional benefit, U.S. adults still hold a more negative view of aging compared to adults in Asia. We hypothesized that these aging stereotypes may contribute to different patterns of age-related emotional memory processing in the two cultures. In the present study, we tested young and older adults in the U.S. and China on a View of Aging task and an emotional picture memory task. Chinese older adults hold a significantly more positive view of aging compared to all other groups of participants. Older adults in both countries demonstrated an age-related positivity effect, but Chinese older adults showed a trend in remembering fewer negative pictures than their American counterparts. These findings suggest that aging stereotypes might significantly influence older adults' cognitive abilities.

Culture, attitudes, and emotional memory: A complicated relationship

“…As mentioned in previous studies (Chung & Lin, 2012), Western and Eastern views of aging could be rather different. In general, older adults in the East have been found to hold a much more positive outlook on aging compared to their Western counterparts.…”

“…Although cultural differences did emerge in the valence ratings of the pictures, the positivity bias remained once this difference was controlled. Chung and Lin (2012) also found a positivity effect in Chinese participants (tested in Canton, China), although the patterns of memory were different between the two countries. US older adults remembered more positive pictures than US young adults; but China older adults remembered fewer negative pictures than their younger counterparts.…”

“…Mather and Carstensen (2003) found that older adults not only attend less to negative faces during encoding, but also subsequently recall fewer of the negative stimuli compared to positive faces. Although most of the original positivity effect results were found in Western countries, recent studies have extended this effect to Eastern countries such as Korea (Kwon et al, 2009) and China (Chung & Lin, 2012). Conversely, Fung, Lu, Goren, Isaacowitz, Wadlinger, and Wilson (2008) did not reveal an age-related positivity effect in HK.…”

“…Although the examination of cross-cultural generalizability of the age-related positivity effect has begun (e.g., Chung & Lin, 2012;Kwon et al, 2009), the relation between culturally-based views of aging and emotional memory have not yet been explored systematically. As previous studies on culture and cognition suggests, view of aging may shape the way memory is processed.…”

“…In recent years, many studies have compared age-related emotional and cognitive changes cross-culturally, especially between Western, independent cultures such as the US, and Eastern, interdependent cultures such as China (e.g., Chung & Lin, 2012;Fung, 2013;Kwon, Schiebe, Samanez-Larkin, Tsai, & Carstensen, 2009). This West vs. East contrast is especially interesting given the relatively negative view on aging in the West based on individualistic and youth-oriented values (e.g., Crockett & Hummert, 1987;Kite & Johnson, 1988), and the more positive views of old age in the East due to Confucian and filial piety traditions (Giles, McCann, Ota, & Noels 2002;Levy & Langer, 1994;Valdez, Angeles, Pareja-Corpuz, & Hernandez, 2013).…”