Looking While Unhappy

Abstract

Recent findings that older adults gaze toward positively valenced stimuli and away from negatively valenced stimuli have been interpreted as part of their attempts to achieve the goal of feeling good. However, the idea that older adults use gaze to regulate mood, and that their gaze does not simply reflect mood, stands in contrast to evidence of mood-congruent processing in young adults. No previous study has directly linked age-related positive gaze preferences to mood regulation. In this eye-tracking study, older and younger adults in a range of moods viewed synthetic face pairs varying in valence. Younger adults demonstrated mood-congruent gaze, looking more at positive faces when in a good mood and at negative faces when in a bad mood. Older adults displayed mood-incongruent positive gaze, looking toward positive and away from negative faces when in a bad mood. This finding suggests that in older adults, gaze does not reflect mood, but rather is used to regulate it.Recent studies have documented age differences in patterns of fixation to emotional stimuli paired with neutral stimuli. Older adults show preferential fixation toward positive stimuli displaying happiness and away from negative stimuli displaying anger and sadness, whereas young adults show preferential fixation toward negative stimuli displaying fear (Isaacowitz, Wadlinger, Goren, & Wilson, 2006a, 2006b. Such age-related positivity effects in information processing have been investigated and interpreted within the framework of socioemotional selectivity theory (Carstensen, 2006;Carstensen, Isaacowitz, & Charles, 1999). According to this theory, motivational shifts lead older adults to prioritize emotionregulatory goals, and their preferential processing of positively over negatively valenced stimuli is a logical means to accomplish the goal of optimizing current mood.How can one know whether older adults' positive gaze preferences arise for these reasons? An important piece of the theoretical puzzle has yet to be demonstrated: whether these gaze patterns relate specifically to mood regulation. In other words, do positive gaze preferences arise when older adults are in a situation in which they need to regulate their mood? The current study was designed to answer this question, thus testing whether socioemotional selectivity theory provides an accurate motivational account for the origin of age differences in gaze.The idea that older adults use positive preferences in their gaze to intentionally regulate their mood (Carstensen, Mikels, & Mather, 2006) Blaney, 1986;Bower, 1981;Matt, Vázquez, & Campbell, 1992). Though most of this evidence for mood congruence concerns memory, one study found that dysphoric young adults look more at negative than at neutral stimuli, thus showing mood-congruent sustained attention (Bradley, Mogg, & Lee, 1997). Mood-congruent processing is generally interpreted as resulting from the mood itself, serving to maintain mood through primarily automatic processes (Blaney, 1986). As young adults' mood congruence is c...

Older adults' attentional deployment: Differential gaze patterns for different negative mood states

“…Second, studies analyzing the interplay between mood states and attentional deployment have mainly focused on attention during naturalistic free viewing, finding evidence for prolonged attentional processing of positive compared to negative information (e.g. Isaacowitz et al, 2008). However, attention research stresses the importance of differentiating between interrelated components of attention (Posner & Cohen, 1984), such as attentional engagement (i.e., directing attention towards stimuli) and attentional disengagement (i.e., shifting attention away from stimuli).…”

“…Older adults who reported higher levels of anxiety showed the largest positivity effect, as evidenced by faster attentional avoidance of negative stimuli. Isaacowitz, Toner, Goren, and Wilson (2008) induced a negative mood state in a sample of older adults before assessing attention patterns to different emotional stimuli with eye tracking. Older adults at high levels of negative mood spent more time looking towards positive stimuli and less time looking towards negative stimuli.…”

Resilience at Information Processing Level in Older Adults: Maintained Attention for Happy Faces when Positive Mood is Low

“…First, we explored the influence of the relaxation manipulation on attentional bias. If the positivity effect is most pronounced during a negative mood context (Demeyer & De Raedt, 2013;Isaacowitz et al, 2008), we might anticipate to find group differences in attentional bias, showing less maintained attention to positive information or less attentional avoidance of negative information in the relaxation group compared to the control group. Secondly, we also examined the direct relationship between inter-individual differences in mood and attentional bias over the whole group to verify whether participants scoring lower on positive mood and/or higher on negative mood would show more attentional bias towards positive information and less attention towards negative information.…”

“…In light of this reasoning, other goals may drive information processing of emotional information in older adults when emotion regulation is not needed, such as during a calm or positive mood. Although studies have provided evidence showing that negative mood leads to emotion regulation through mood-incongruent attentional processing (e.g., Demeyer & de Raedt, 2013;Isaacowitz et al, 2008), little is known about older adults' information processing when emotional well-being is not threatened and emotion regulation is not needed, such as during a calm relaxed state. Given that the cognitive nature of experimental paradigms may activate negative mood in older adults through negative age-related stereotypes about their abilities to succeed in these tasks , we decided to use a relaxation procedure to induce such a calm state.…”

“…Demeyer and De Raedt (2013) showed that older adults who experienced more anxiety demonstrated more attentional avoidance of negative stimuli. Moreover, in a study investigating attention through eye tracking after a mood manipulation in both young and older adults (Isaacowitz, Toner, Goren, & Wilson, 2008), it was also found that older adults show mood-incongruent gaze patterns. In contrast to younger adults who demonstrated mood-congruent gaze patterns (i.e., more time spent looking at negative stimuli during negative mood), older adults spent more time looking to positive stimuli and less time looking to negative stimuli during negative mood.…”