The positivity bias in aging: Motivation or degradation?

Kalenzaga, Sandrine; Lamidey, Virginie; Ergis, Anne-Marie; Clarys, David; Piolino, Pascale

doi:10.1037/emo0000170

Cited by 36 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 60 publications

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“…Similarly, if the PE predominantly depends on impaired amygdala functions, it is also expected to be larger for high-arousing stimuli, because processing of these stimuli predominantly relies on information processing in limbic networks. Our findings better fit in with the idea that the PE is the result of top-down driven cognitive processes ( Mather and Knight, 2005 ; Knight et al, 2007 ; Sasse et al, 2014 ; Kalenzaga et al, 2016 ; Mammarella et al, 2016 , 2017 ). Implementation of these processes may be impeded in situations involving high arousal most likely resulting in the diminishment of the PE.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 87%

Linking the Positivity Effect in Attention with Affective Outcomes: Age Group Differences and the Role of Arousal

et al. 2017

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Despite its assumed importance for emotional well-being, studies investigating the positivity effect (PE) in older adults’ information processing rarely tested its relationship with immediate or general affective outcome measures like emotional reactivity or emotional well-being. Moreover, the arousal level of the to-be-processed emotional stimuli has rarely been taken into account as a moderator for the occurrence of the PE and its relationship with affective outcomes. Age group differences (young vs. old) in attention (i.e., fixation durations using eye tracking) and subjective emotional reactions (i.e., pleasantness ratings) were investigated in response to picture stimuli systematically varied in valence (positive vs. negative) and arousal (low vs. high). We examined whether there is a link between age group differences in fixation durations and affective outcomes (i.e., subjective emotional reactions as well as emotional well-being). Older compared to young adults fixated less on the most emotional part in negative but not in positive low-arousing pictures. This age difference did not occur under high arousal. While age group differences in fixation duration did not translate into age group differences in subjective emotional reactions, we found a positive relationship between fixation duration on negative low-arousing pictures and emotional well-being, i.e., negative affect. The present study replicated the well-known PE in attention and emotional reactivity. In line with the idea that the PE reflects top-down-driven processing of affective information, age group differences in fixation durations decreased under high arousal. The present findings are consistent with the idea that age-related changes in the processing of emotional information support older adults’ general emotional well-being.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 87%

Linking the Positivity Effect in Attention with Affective Outcomes: Age Group Differences and the Role of Arousal

et al. 2017

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“…The competing explanations were recently tested in a delayed recall task with Alzheimer’s disease patients, healthy older adults and young adults. Consistent with the motivational perspective, the effect was observed in healthy older adults but not in patients with Alzheimer’s disease [34•]. …”

Section: Exploring Alternative Explanationsmentioning

confidence: 84%

The positivity effect: a negativity bias in youth fades with age

Carstensen

DeLiema

2018

Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences

256

149

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Relative to younger adults, older adults attend to and remember positive information more than negative information. This shift from a negativity bias in younger age to a preference for positive information in later life is termed the ‘positivity effect.’ Based on nearly two decades of research and recent evidence from neuroscience, we argue that the effect reflects age-related changes in motivation that direct behavior and cognitive processing rather than neural or cognitive decline. Understanding the positivity effect, including conditions that reduce and enhance it, can inform effective public health and educational messages directed at older people.

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“…This segregation may be due to preferential processing of negative stimuli in young adults under conditions of limited attention. Young adults may spontaneously focus their attention on negative information and process it in a more selfreferential way (Chainay et al 2014); however, the opposite is true in older adults who preferentially process positive rather than negative stimuli (Kalenzaga et al 2016;Kensinger and Schacter 2008;Leigland et al 2004;Zhang et al 2015). We therefore speculate that for young adults, valence rather than Fig.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 81%

Effect of emotional enhancement of memory on recollection process in young adults: the influence factors and neural mechanisms

Chen

et al. 2018

Brain Imaging and Behavior

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Emotional enhancement of memory (EEM) is thought to modulate memory recollection rather than familiarity. However, the contributing factors and neural mechanisms are not well understood. To address these issues, we investigated how valence, arousal, and the amount of devoted attention influence the EEM effect on recollection. We also compared the topological properties among hippocampus-and perirhinal and entorhinal cortex-mediated emotional memory processing networks. Finally, we evaluated the correlations between emotional memory/EEM and inherent properties (i.e., amplitude of lowfrequency fluctuation and node degree, efficiency, and betweenness) of the hippocampus and perirhinal and entorhinal cortices in 59 healthy young adults by resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging. EEM was elicited by incidental encoding, negative images, and positive high-arousal images. The hippocampus was correlated with recollection sensitivity and EEM negative-high-arousal. The emotional memory processing network mediated by the hippocampus had higher clustering coefficient, local efficiency, and normalized characteristic path length but lower normalized global efficiency than those mediated by the perirhinal and entorhinal cortices. The entorhinal cortex was associated with both recollection and familiarity sensitivity, but showed different correlation patterns. The perirhinal cortex was highly correlated with familiarity sensitivity of negative lowarousal stimuli. These results demonstrate that the EEM effect on memory recollection is influenced by valence, stimulus arousal, and amount of attention involved during encoding. Moreover, the hippocampus and perirhinal and entorhinal cortices play distinct roles in the recollection and familiarity of emotional memory and the EEM effect.

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The positivity bias in aging: Motivation or degradation?

Cited by 36 publications

References 60 publications

Linking the Positivity Effect in Attention with Affective Outcomes: Age Group Differences and the Role of Arousal

Linking the Positivity Effect in Attention with Affective Outcomes: Age Group Differences and the Role of Arousal

The positivity effect: a negativity bias in youth fades with age

Effect of emotional enhancement of memory on recollection process in young adults: the influence factors and neural mechanisms

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