“…At the automatic stage of visual search of emotional stimuli, older but not younger adults were faster to detect emotionally negative, high-arousal targets ( Leclerc and Kensinger, 2008 ). Another study demonstrated that older adults’ performance in recognizing facially expressed emotions were not affected by stereotype (ageism) threat, likely because emotion recognition is automatic and less susceptible to the cognitive load posed by the threats ( Atkinson et al, 2020 ). Notably, a recent study reported positive versus negative categorization of faces of ambiguous valence to be faster in older and slower in young adults, and discussed role of information processing automaticity in manifesting the positivity effect ( Petro et al, 2021 ).…”