Perceived Accomplishment in Later Life: The Influence of Past Decisions Between Family and Work

Whereas previous studies have investigated life regrets, little attention has been paid to the important accomplishments older adults include in their autobiographic life narratives. Phenomenon such as the memory positivity effect suggest that accomplishments should be observed. We used a Health and Retirement Study 2017 Life History Mail Survey (N = 2,165) to examine the characteristics of participants over age 65 who reported accomplishments (max = 3), what was reported, and whether early-life decisions about balancing family and work are associated with the reports. Women, whites, and people with at least high school education and normal cognitive status were more likely to report accomplishments (67%). We categorized reports as family-related (39%), personal (19%), combined family/personal (25%) or other (16%). Multinominal logistic regression models revealed that participants who themselves favored family over work in early life or whose spouse decided for family, were more likely to report family-related accomplishments.

Effects of age on face perception: Reduced eye region discrimination ability but intact holistic processing

While age-related decline in face recognition memory is well established, the degree of decline in face perceptual abilities across the lifespan and their underlying mechanisms are incompletely characterized. In the current study, using the part-whole task, we sought to examine how age relates to facial feature discrimination ability and holistic face processing in a large sample of 3,341 online participants aged 18-69 years. We evaluated performance on the part-whole eye and mouth trials and the magnitude of the part-whole holistic advantage across the lifespan. We found that while discrimination of the eye region decreased beginning in the 50s, both mouth discrimination accuracy and the magnitude of the holistic advantage were stable with age. When investigating gender differences, we found that age-related declines in eye region accuracy were more pronounced in men than women, but this was not true for mouth accuracy or holistic processing. We discuss potential mechanistic explanations for this eye region-specific aging effect, including age-related hearing loss and its potential relationship with the age-related positivity effect.

Happy Times are Longer When We are Older: Emotions Affect Time Perception in Older Adults

Emotions change people’s time perception, which has been evidenced in children and younger adults. However, older adults, who cognitively process positive stimuli to a greater extent than negative and neutral stimuli (Carstensen & Mikels, 2005), had been neglected in most empirical studies examining the role of emotion played in time perception. Using a temporal bisection task, the present study investigated age differences (Nolder =21, Nyounger=21) in time perception of negative (sad and angry), positive (happy), and neutral facial expressions. A significant age by emotion interaction in time perception was found in results, such that older adults perceived the presentation durations of happy faces longer than negative ones, whereas the opposite pattern was observed in younger adults. The present findings could be interpreted by the internal clock model and the “positivity effect” in older adults’ cognitive and affective processes.

What is the Role of Memory in Consumer–Brand Relationship? Insight from sport industry

We live in a time when symbolism is of enormous priority. Memories are a particularly important part of the construction of individual identity and the subsequent relationships established, personal and with the loved brands. Previous research in psychology and neurosciences on negativity effect claims that negative events have more impact than positive ones. In an emotional context like the sports industry, being a fan has implications at all levels: psychological, mental and behavioural. Deepening the theme of memory from a psychological perspective, the present study theorises about the hypothesis of positivity effect in memory in the behaviour of sport fans in consumer neuroscience studies. Theoretical contribution and managerial suggestions are presented, in addition, as direction for further research.

Prospective Memory and Positivity Bias in the COVID-19 Health Crisis: The Effects of Aging

This study aimed to determine whether the observed tendency to remember more positive than negative past events (positivity phenomena) also appears when recalling hypothetical events about the future. In this study, young, middle-aged, and older adults were presented with 28 statements about the future associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, half positive and half negative. In addition, half of these statements were endowed with personal implications while the other half had a more social connotations. Participants rated their agreement/disagreement with each statement and, after a distraction task, they recalled as many statements as possible. There was no difference in the agreement ratings between the three age groups, but the participants agreed with positive statements more than with negative ones and they identified more with statements of social content than of personal content. The younger and older individuals recalled more statements than the middle-aged people. More importantly, older participants recalled more positive than negative statements (positivity effect), and showed a greater tendency to turn negative statements into more positive or neutral ones (positivity bias). These findings showed that the positivity effect occurs in even such complex and situations as the present pandemic, especially in older adults. The results are discussed by reference to the notion of commission errors and false memories resulting from the activation of cognitive biases.

Positivity effect in source attributions of arousal-matched emotional and non-emotional words during item-based directed forgetting

Consistent with their emphasis on emotional goals, older adults often exhibit a positivity bias in attention and memory relative to their young counterparts (i.e., a positivity effect). The current study sought to determine how this age-related positivity effect would impact intentional forgetting of emotional words, a process critical to efficient operation of memory. Using an item-based directed forgetting task, 36 young and 36 older adults studied a series of arousal-equivalent words that varied in valence (i.e., positive, negative, and neutral). Each word was followed by a cue to either remember or forget the word. A subsequent “tagging” recognition task required classification of items as to-be-remembered (TBR), to-be-forgotten (TBF), or new as a measure of directed forgetting and source attribution in participants' memory. Neither young nor older adults' intentional forgetting was affected by the valence of words. A goal-consistent valence effect did, however, emerge in older adults' source attribution performance. Specifically, older adults assigned more TBR-cues to positive words and more TBF-cues to negative words. Results are discussed in light of existing literature on emotion and directed forgetting as well as the socioemotional selectivity theory underlying the age-related positivity effect.

Positivity effect in source attributions of arousal-matched emotional and non-emotional words during item-based directed forgetting

Consistent with their emphasis on emotional goals, older adults often exhibit a positivity bias in attention and memory relative to their young counterparts (i.e., a positivity effect). The current study sought to determine how this age-related positivity effect would impact intentional forgetting of emotional words, a process critical to efficient operation of memory. Using an item-based directed forgetting task, 36 young and 36 older adults studied a series of arousal-equivalent words that varied in valence (i.e., positive, negative, and neutral). Each word was followed by a cue to either remember or forget the word. A subsequent “tagging” recognition task required classification of items as to-be-remembered (TBR), to-be-forgotten (TBF), or new as a measure of directed forgetting and source attribution in participants' memory. Neither young nor older adults' intentional forgetting was affected by the valence of words. A goal-consistent valence effect did, however, emerge in older adults' source attribution performance. Specifically, older adults assigned more TBR-cues to positive words and more TBF-cues to negative words. Results are discussed in light of existing literature on emotion and directed forgetting as well as the socioemotional selectivity theory underlying the age-related positivity effect.

Age-Related Differences in Affective Norms for Chinese Words (AANC)

Information on age-related differences in affective meanings of words is widely used by researchers to study emotions, word recognition, attention, memory, and text-based sentiment analysis. To date, no Chinese affective norms for older adults are available although Chinese as a spoken language has the largest population in the world. This article presents the first large-scale age-related affective norms for 2,061 four-character Chinese words (AANC). Each word in this database has rating values in the four dimensions, namely, valence, arousal, dominance, and familiarity. We found that older adults tended to perceive positive words as more arousing and less controllable and evaluate negative words as less arousing and more controllable than younger adults did. This indicates that the positivity effect is reliable for older adults who show a processing bias toward positive vs. negative words. Our AANC database supplies valuable information for researchers to study how emotional characteristics of words influence the cognitive processes and how this influence evolves with age. This age-related difference study on affective norms not only provides a tool for cognitive science, gerontology, and psychology in experimental studies but also serves as a valuable resource for affective analysis in various natural language processing applications.