Retirement through rose-colored glasses: greater positivity bias in retired relative to working older adults

Abstract

Retirement has been associated with declines in memory beyond typical age-related memory decline. This may impact the ability to remember distinct events, as older adults (OA) are susceptible to interference in memory across experiences with overlapping features. Impaired hippocampal pattern separation, a computation that allows for the disambiguation of similar experiences as unique events, is thought to underlie age-related impairment in memory. Furthermore, positive experiences tend to be better remembered than neutral or negative experiences in aging. Socioemotional selectivity theory suggests that awareness of a limited remaining lifespan leads OA to prioritize emotionally fulfilling experiences, often leading to a bias towards positive information compared to negative or neutral information. However, the potential role of retirement in contributing to these age-related changes in memory has yet to be examined. Memory measures that tax hippocampal pattern separation may be more sensitive to memory impairment in retirement compared to standard memory measures. Retirement may exacerbate awareness of reduced remaining time, such that retired OA may experience a greater positivity bias in memory than their working peers. Here, we utilized an emotional memory task that taxes hippocampal pattern separation to examine memory in age-matched retired and working OA. We found that retired OA show selective impairments for memories with high interference and a greater positivity bias in memory compared to their working peers. These findings suggest that retirement may accelerate age-related memory changes, including greater susceptibility to interference as well as a bias toward remembering positive relative to neutral information.