The age-related positivity effect in cognition: A review of key findings across different cognitive domains

Abstract

As people get older, there is an age-related shift in emotional processing. When compared to younger adults, older adults are relatively more positive and/or less negative in their cognitive processing. This is known as the positivity effect, and it has now been documented in a wide variety of cognitive domains. For instance, in experiments examining age differences in episodic memory there are age-related declines in performance, but these age deficits are relatively larger for stimuli that are negative in valence and are relatively smaller for stimuli that are positive in valence. In this review, we describe the common experimental paradigms and the key findings emerging from positivity effect research in the following specific domains: (1) visual attention, (2) episodic memory, (3) autobiographical memory, (4) memory for one's own past emotions, (5) decision making, and (6) responses to persuasive messages as a function of their framing, and (7) emotion recognition and the processing of faces. When considered as a whole, we see that across domains the positivity effect most often occurs due to age-related reductions in the processing of negative information, as opposed to age-related improvements in the processing of positive information. However, the emergence and magnitude of the positivity effect also varies as a function of the discrete negative emotion being studied and is attenuated for information that is high in motivational or personal relevance. Together, these findings make a strong case for considering emotional valence in the study of cognitive aging.