What is the positivity effect ?
The preponderance of the treatment of emotional information is present at all ages and has been found in many works in young adults but also in older adults.
The positivity effect is distinguished from the positivity bias (Löckenhoff & Carstensen, 2007). Indeed, the positivity bias refers to an increase in the treatment of positive information compared to negative information (Kennedy, Mather, and Carstensen 2004). Conversely, a negativity bias implies an increase in the treatment of negative information compared to positive information. Finally, an effect of negativity would imply that subjects, as they age, tend to treat more negative rather than positive information. Thus, negativity or positivity bias can only be observed within the same age group, whereas the effects of positivity or negativity can be observed only by comparing young adults with older adults (two age groups) (Langeslag, &Van Strien 2009).
However, many studies highlight the existence of disparities in the treatment of emotional information according to their valence, in young and old. For example, Carstensen and Mikels (2005) note that young adults display preferences for negative emotions while older people preferentially treat positive information. Indeed, the literature highlights a bias of negativity. This is a preferential treatment of negative information in young adults affecting many areas of everyday life (Murphy & Isaacowitz, 2008). This tendency to preferentially treat negative stimuli and to put aside positive stimuli seems to be reversed with advancing age. Thus, many studies show that, as people get older, they preferentially treat positive rather than negative stimuli. This change in the treatment of positive and negative information that occurs during adult Lifespan has been called: the positivity effect (Reed & Carstensen, 2012).
The definition of a positivity effect differs according to the authors who study it. Thus, for Langeslag & Van Strien (2009), three types of information processing bias remain that can lead to a positivity effect: (1) younger adults show no treatment bias while older adults show positivity bias, (2) older adults show no treatment bias, younger adults show a negativity bias, (3) older adults show a positivity bias, and younger adults show a bias of negativity. This third definition of the effect of positivity is that which is notably supported by Reed and Carstensen (2012). Completely, for other authors such as Grühn, Gilet, Studer & Labouvie-Vief (2011), the effect of positivity is defined rather as the reduction of a bias of negativity with the advancement in age.
The effect of positivity: memory and decision making
The effect of positivity has been studied in many researches in psychology and especially in studies investigating memory. As emphasized by Charles, Mather, and Carstensen (2003), there is an emotional bias in memorization that results in a higher recall or recognition of positive emotional stimuli than negative or neutral stimuli in aging. This phenomenon can concern both words and faces. This type of treatment preference is also found in studies of long-term self-memory. Indeed, older people tend to recall more positive than negative elements about events in their past compared to their own recall of these events fourteen years ago (Kennedy et al., 2004).
Studies concerning decision making also highlight the presence of this type of treatment preference. This is the case of the study conducted by Löckenhoff and Carstensen (2007) on the selection of life insurance among several fictitious proposals. The authors were able to underline that compared to younger subjects, older participants studied the positive options more carefully than the negative. Therefore, older people would make more decisions on the basis of positive criteria, while younger subjects would prefer a compromise strategy between positive and negative aspects.
The theory behind the positivity effect : the socio-emotional selectivity theory (SST)
It is a motivational theory, part of a Lifespan (whole life) approach (Carstensen, Isaacowitz, & Charles, 1999). This explanatory model is based on the idea that human beings act permanently according to the perception of time perspective and opportunities for the future. hereby, this theory postulates that depending on future time horizons, our goals evolve and change (Isaacowitz, 2012).
While young people place their main goals in the creation of new social relations and the acquisition of new knowledge because of their perception of the time left to live as unlimited, the elderly avoid information and negative feelings (Allard, Wadlinger, & Isaacowitz, 2010). This, in favor of positive emotional objectives that can bring them a certain emotional stability as well as well-being (Gronchi et al., 2018). This motivational change observed in aging is thus linked to the perception of the limited time that remains to be lived and would be done in a conscious manner (controlled attention processes), at the service of emotional regulation. It is, therefore, not age that conditions emotional changes but rather temporal perspectives and associated motivational changes. Thus, the positivity effect can be observed at any age.
In this sense, many studies concerning the limited temporal perspective of younger participants have been conducted and corroborated this idea. In Fact, compared to young adult with same age and without health problem, young adults with serious illness, such as HIV (Carstensen & Fredrickson, 1998), and whose life prospects are limited, give more importance on affects in interpersonal relationships. The same pattern of results is found in the study of Sullivan-Singh, Stanton and Low (2015) concerning women with breast cancer. In addition, when young people perceive time constraints or older people perceive the future as relatively long, age differences are reduced or eliminated. Also, when temporal extensions are experimentally induced in the elderly, their objectives are similar to those of the young (Fung et al., 1999).
This explanatory model based on the notion of limited time perspective is now a bit controversial. It has recently been questioned in particular with the study of Kan, Garrison, Drummey, Emmert and Rogers (2017). In this study, the authors examined age and time-limited perspectives as predictors of the positivity effect in a memory task. It was presented to participants a series of images on a computer screen. These images were either positive, negative or neutral. After 15 minutes, the participants briefly described the images they had seen previously. Also, participants completed the Future Time Perspective (FTP) scale to help them see their limited time perspective. The results of this study revealed a predictor of age on positivity in the episodic memory task, but no effect of the temporal perspective, going against the postulate of SST. Further studies are, therefore, still needed to provide new information and better understand the positivity effect
Words I have learned : prospects, hereby, increase, lifespan
Laura JARNY.
References
Allard, E. S., Wadlinger, H. A., & Isaacowitz, D. M. (2010). Positive Gaze Preferences in Older Adults: Assessing the Role of Cognitive Effort with Pupil Dilation. Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition, 17(3), 296–311.
Carstensen, L. L., & Fredrickson, B. L. (1998). Influence of HIV status and age on cognitive representations of others. Health Psychology, 17(6), 494-503.
Carstensen, L. L., & Mikels, J. A. (2005). At the Intersection of Emotion and Cognition. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 14(3), 117–121.
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Gronchi, G., Righi, S., Pierguidi, L., Giovannelli, F., Murasecco, I., & Viggiano, M. (2018). Automatic and controlled attentional orienting in the elderly: A dual-process view of the positivity effect. Acta Psychologica, 185, 229–234
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