The positivity effect: A negativity bias in youth fades with age

LL Carstensen, M DeLiema - Current opinion in behavioral sciences, 2018 - Elsevier
Highlights•Neural degradation and cognitive impairment cannot account for the positivity
effect.•Cognitive load reduces the positivity effect.•Constraints on time horizons produce the …

The limited roles of cognitive capabilities and future time perspective in contributing to positivity effects

SJ Barber, N Lopez, K Cadambi, S Alferez - Cognition, 2020 - Elsevier
When compared to younger adults, older adults tend to favor positive over negative
information in attention and memory. This is known as the positivity effect. Although this is a …

Age differences in emotion-induced blindness: Positivity effects in early attention.

BL Kennedy, R Huang, M Mather - Emotion, 2020 - psycnet.apa.org
Compared with younger adults, older adults tend to favor positive information more than
negative information in their attention and memory. This “positivity effect” has been observed …

Disruption of amygdala–entorhinal–hippocampal network in late‐life depression

SL Leal, JA Noche, EA Murray, MA Yassa - Hippocampus, 2017 - Wiley Online Library
Episodic memory deficits are evident in late‐life depression (LLD) and are associated with
subtle synaptic and neurochemical changes in the medial temporal lobes (MTL). However …

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

LA Ferguson, A Harikumar… - Work, Aging and …, 2024 - academic.oup.com
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 …

Subclinical depressive symptoms and job stress differentially impact memory in working and retired older adults

LA Ferguson, A Harikumar, SL Leal - Scientific Reports, 2025 - nature.com
Retirement has been associated with cognitive decline beyond normal age-related decline.
However, there are many individual differences in retirement that can influence cognition …

The Positivity Effect

SJ Barber, H Kim - … pathways of cognitive aging: Motivational and …, 2021 - books.google.com
Older adults are often stereotyped as being hopeless, despondent, and depressed (eg,
Hummert et al., 1994). However, in contrast to this “doom and gloom” view, research has …

Stereotype threat reduces the positivity of older adults' recall

SJ Barber, J Seliger, N Yeh… - The Journals of …, 2019 - academic.oup.com
Objectives As people get older, they show a relative preference to remember positive
information over negative information. In two experiments, we tested whether the positivity of …

Interactions of Emotion and Memory in the Aging Brain: Neural and Psychological Correlates

LA Ferguson, SL Leal - Current Behavioral Neuroscience Reports, 2022 - Springer
Abstract Purpose of Review This review aims to summarize current research on the
psychological and neural substrates of emotion and memory in aging. Recent Findings …

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

H Kim, SJ Barber - Psychology of Learning and Motivation, 2022 - Elsevier
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 …