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

Abstract

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.

The Impact of Emotional States on Construction Workers’ Recognition Ability of Safety Hazards Based on Social Cognitive Neuroscience

“…Given that the construction workers’ emotions may be influenced by the age ( Kappes et al, 2017 ), age was chosen as the independent variable and a one-way ANOVA was used to explore the effect of emotions on construction workers’ recognition ability of safety hazards at different working ages.…”

Gain without pain: Glucose promotes cognitive engagement and protects positive affect in older adults.

“…The only difference found was for the main effect of age on subjective effort ratings, with the effect being only marginally significant, F(1, 101) = 3.32, p = .072, ηp 2 = .032. 4 It should be noted that no direct links have been established between the positivity effect and mood states (for review, see Isaacowitz & Blanchard-Fields, 2012), yet older adults' motivation to prioritize positive material appears to be closely related to affective outcomes (e.g., Isaacowitz et al, 2009;Kappes et al, 2017).…”

“…It should be noted that no direct links have been established between the positivity effect and mood states (for a review, seeIsaacowitz & Blanchard-Fields, 2012), yet older adults' motivation to prioritize positive material appears to be closely related to affective outcomes (e.g.,Isaacowitz et al, 2009;Kappes et al, 2017). This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.…”

“…4It should be noted that no direct links have been established between the positivity effect and mood states (for a review, see Isaacowitz & Blanchard-Fields, 2012), yet older adults’ motivation to prioritize positive material appears to be closely related to affective outcomes (e.g., Isaacowitz et al, 2009; Kappes et al, 2017). …”

Role of arousal in age-related positivity effects in attention

“…When arousal has been included in studies of emotional attention in aging, positivity effects appear more pronounced in low arousal contexts (Demeyer, Sanchez, & De Raedt, 2016;Kappes, Streubel, Droste & Folta-Schoofs, 2017) and attention to high arousal negative stimuli does not seem to differ by age (Mather & Knight, 2006). However, given declines in attentional disengagement with age (Cashdollar et al, 2013), there may be contexts in which older adults struggle to attend more positively even when they are motivated to do so.…”