Publications
Please click on any of the selected current publications for an abstract.
In Press
Allard, E.S., Wadlinger, H.A., & Isaacowitz, D.M. (in press). Positive gaze preferences in older adults: Assessing the role of cognitive effort with pupil dilation. Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition.
Ersner-Hershfield, H., Carvel, D.S., & Isaacowitz, D.M. (in press). Feeling happy and sad, but only seeing the positive: Poignancy and the positivity effect in attention. Motivation and Emotion.
Isaacowitz. D.M., Toner, K., & Neupert, S.D. (in press). Use of gaze for real-time mood regulation: Effects of age and attentional functioning. Psychology and Aging.
Larcom, M.J. & Isaacowitz, D.M. (in press). Rapid emotion regulation after mood induction: Age and individual differences. Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences.
Murphy, N.A., & Isaacowitz, D.M. (in press). Age effects and gaze patterns in recognizing emotional expressions: An in-depth look at gaze measures and covariates. Cognition and Emotion.
Pearman, A., Andreoletti, C., & Isaacowitz, D.M. (in press). Sadness prediction and response: Effects of age and agreeableness. Aging and Mental Health.
Piquado, T., Isaacowitz, D.M., & Wingfield, A. (in press). Pupillometry as a measure of cognitive effort in younger and older adults. Psychophysiology.
2009
Isaacowitz, D.M., Allard, E., Murphy, N.A., & Schlangel, M. (2009). The time course of agerelated preferences towards positive and negative stimuli. Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences, 64B, 188-192.
Nguyen, H.T., Isaacowitz, D.M., & Rubin, P.A.D. (2009). Age- and fatigue-related markers of human faces: An eye tracking study. Opthamology, 115, 355-360.
2008
Al1ard, E.S., & Isaacowitz, D.M. (2008). Are preferences in emotional processing affected by distraction? Examining the age-related positivity effect in visual fixation within a dual-task paradigm. Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition, 15, 725-743.
Fung, H.L., Isaacowitz, D.M., Lu, A.Y., Wadlinger, H.A., Goren, D. & Wilson, H.R. (2008). Age-related positivity enhancement is not universal: Older Chinese look away from positive stimuli. Psychology and Aging., 23, 440-446.
Isaacowitz, D.M., Toner, K., Goren, D., & Wilson, H.R. (2008). Looking while unhappy: Mood congruent gaze in young adults, positive gaze in older adults. Psychological Science, 19, 848-853.
Murphy, N.A., & Isaacowitz, D.M. (2008). Preferences for emotional information in older and younger adults: A meta-analysis of memory and attention tasks. Psychology and Aging., 23, 263- 286.
Wadlinger, H.A., & Isaacowitz, D.M. (2008). Looking happy: The experimental manipulation of a positive visual attention bias. Emotion, 8 , 121-126.
2007
Isaacowitz, D.M. (2007). Understanding individual and age differences in well-being: An experimental, attention-based approach. In A. Ong & M. van Dulmen (Eds.), Oxford Handbook of Methods in Positive Psychology (pp. 220-232). New York: Oxford University Press.
Isaacowitz, D.M., Löckenhoff, C., Wright, R., Sechrest, L., Riedel, R., Lane, R.A., & Costa, P.T. (2007). Age differences in recognition of emotion in lexical stimuli and facial expressions. Psychology and Aging, 22, 147-159.
Isaacowitz, D.M., & Seligman, M.E.P. (2007). Learned Helplessness. In The Encyclopedia of Stress, 2nd edition(pp. 567-570). Oxford, UK: Elsevier.
Luo, J., & Isaacowitz, D.M. (2007). How optimists face skin cancer: Risk assessment, attention, memory, and behavior. Psychology & Health, 22, 963-984.
2006
Isaacowitz, D.M. (2006). Motivated Gaze: The view from the gazer. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 15, 68-72.
Isaacowitz, D.M., Wadlinger, H.A., Goren, D., & Wilson, H.R. (2006). Is there an age-related positivity effect in visual attention? A comparison of two methodologies. Emotion, 6, 511-516.
Isaacowitz, D.M., Wadlinger, H.A., Goren, D., & Wilson, H.R. (2006). Selective preference in visual fixation away from negative images in old age? An eye tracking study. Psychology and Aging, 21, 40-48.
Light, J., & Isaacowitz, D.M. (2006). The effect of developmental regulation on visual attention: The example of the "Biological Clock."Cognition and Emotion, 20, 623-645.
Pruzan, K. & Isaacowitz, D.M. (2006). An attentional application of socioemotional selectivity theory in college students. Social Development, 15, 326-338.
Rossi, N.E. & Isaacowitz, D.M. (2006). What is important to me now? Age differences in domain selectivity depend on the measure. Ageing International, 31, 24-43.
Wadlinger, H.A., & Isaacowitz, D.M. (2006). Positive mood broadens visual attention to positive stimuli. Motivation and Emotion, 30, 89-101.
Xing, C., & Isaacowitz, D.M. (2006). Aiming at happiness: How motivation affects attention to and memory for emotional images. Motivation and Emotion, 30, 249-256.
2005
Isaacowitz, D.M. (2005). An attentional perspective on successful socioemotional aging: Theory and preliminary evidence. Research in Human Development, 3, 115-132.
Isaacowitz, D.M. (2005). Correlates of well-being in adulthood and old age: A tale of two optimisms. Journal of Research in Personality, 39, 224-244.
Isaacowitz, D.M. (2005). The gaze of the optimist. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 3, 407-415.
Xing, C., Luo, J., & Isaacowitz, D.M. (2005). Human strengths, culture and aging. Journal of Psychology in Chinese Societies, 6, 27-59.
2003
Carstensen, L. L, Charles, S. T., Isaacowitz, D. M., & Kennedy, Q. (2003). Life-span personality development and emotion. In R.J. Davidson, H.H. Goldsmith, & K. Scherer (Eds.), The Handbook of Affective Sciences (pp. 726-744). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
Isaacowitz, D.M., & Seligman, M.E.P. (2003). Cognitive styles and psychological well-being in adulthood and old age. In M. Bornstein, L. Davidson, C.L.M. Keyes, K. Moore, & The Center for Child Well-Being (Eds.), Well-Being: Positive development across the lifespan (pp. 449-475). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Isaacowitz, D.M., & Smith, J. (2003). Positive and negative affect in very old age. Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences, 58B, P143-P152.
Isaacowitz, D.M., Smith, T.B., & Carstensen, L.L. (2003). Socioemotional selectivity and mental health among trauma survivors in old age. Ageing International, 28, 181-199
Isaacowitz, D.M., Vaillant, G.E., Seligman, M.E.P. (2003). Strengths and satisfaction across the adult lifespan. International Journal of Aging and Human Development, 57, 183-203.
2002
Isaacowitz, D.M., & Seligman, M.E.P. (2002). Cognitive style predictors of affect change in older adults. International Journal of Aging and Human Development, 54, 233-253.
2001
Isaacowitz, D.M., & Seligman, M.E.P. (2001). Is pessimistic explanatory style a risk factor for depressive mood among community-dwelling older adults? Behaviour Research and Therapy, 39, 255-272.
2000
Carstensen, L.L., Charles, S.T., & Isaacowitz, D.M. (2000). Applying science to human behavior (Reply to Comment). American Psychologist, 55, 343.
Isaacowitz, D.M., Charles, S.T., & Carstensen, L.L. (2000). Emotion and cognition. In F.I.M. Craik & T.A. Salthouse (Eds)., The Handbook of Aging and Cognition (2nd edition, pp. 593-631). Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Seligman, M.E.P., & Isaacowitz, D.M. (2000). Learned helplessness. In The Encyclopedia of Stress (Vol. 2, pp. 599-603). San Diego: Academic Press.
1999
Carstensen, L.L., Isaacowitz, D.M., & Charles, S.T. (1999). Taking time seriously: A theory of socioemotional selectivity. American Psychologist, 54, 165-181.
Positive gaze preferences in older adults: Assessing the role of cognitive effort with pupil dilation.
Older adults display positivity preferences in their gaze, consistent with their prioritization of emotion regulation goals. While some research has argued that substantial amounts of cognitive effort are necessary for these information-processing preferences to occur, other work suggests that these attentional patterns unfold with minimal cognitive exertion. The current study used an implicit regulatory context (i.e. viewing facial stimuli of varying emotions) to assess how much cognitive effort was required for positive attentional preferences
to occur. Effortful cognitive processing was assessed with a direct measure of change in pupil dilation. Results indicated that minimal cognitive effort was expended when older adults engaged in positive gaze preferences. This finding suggests that gaze acts as a rather effortless and economical regulatory tool for individuals to shape their affective experience.Feeling happy and sad, but only seeing the positive: Poignancy and the positivity effect in attention.
Poignancy is a mixed emotional experience that occurs in the face of meaningful endings (Ersner-Hershfield, Mikels, Sullivan, & Carstensen, 2008). Despite documentation of the phenomenological component of poignancy, no study to date has examined the relationship between such a state and information processing. We therefore examined the link between
poignancy and attentional patterns using an eyetracking paradigm. To induce poignancy, experimental condition participants imagined being in a personally chosen meaningful location for a final time; control participants also imagined being in a meaningful location but with no ending. After, both groups were shown emotional images. Experimental condition participants looked more at positive images relative to negative images, whereas participants in the control condition did not display such a preference. Findings suggest that despite being a mixed emotional experience, poignancy may produce a subsequent positivity effect in information processing.Use of gaze for real-time mood regulation: Effects of age and attentional functioning.
Older adults show positive preferences in their gaze toward emotional faces, and such preferences appear to be activated when older adults are in bad moods. This suggests that age-related gaze preferences serve a mood regulatory role, but whether or not they actually function to improve mood over time has yet to be tested. We investigated links between fixation and mood change in younger and older adults, as well as the moderating role of attentional functioning. Age X Fixation X Attentional Functioning interactions emerged, such that older adults
with better executive functioning were able to resist mood declines by showing positive gaze preferences. Implications for the function of age-related positive gaze preferences are discussed.Rapid emotion regulation after mood induction: Age and individual differences.
Previous research has suggested that emotion regulation improves with age. This study examined both age and individual differences in online emotion regulation after a negative mood induction. We found evidence that older adults were more likely to rapidly regulate their emotions than were younger adults. Moreover, older adults who rapidly regulated
had lower trait anxiety and depressive symptoms, and higher levels of optimism, than their same-age peers who did not rapidly regulate. Measuring mood change over an extended time revealed that older rapid regulators still reported increased levels of positive affect over 20 minutes later, whereas young adult rapid regulators’ moods had declined. These results highlight the importance of considering individual differences when examining age differences in online emotion regulation.Age effects and gaze patterns in recognizing emotional expressions: An in-depth look at gaze measures and covariates.
The present study investigated predictors of age effects in emotion recognition accuracy. Older and younger adults were tested on a battery of cognitive, vision, and affective questionnaires; participants’ eyes were also tracked while they completed an emotion recognition task. Older adults were worse at recognizing sad, angry, and fearful expressions than younger adults. When controlling for covariates related to emotion recognition accuracy, younger adults still outperformed older adults in recognizing anger and sadness. Younger adults tended to pay more attention to the eyes than older adults. Results suggest that age-related gaze patterns in emotion recognition may depend on the specific emotion being recognized and may not generalize across stimuli sets.
The time course of age related preferences towards positive and negative stimuli.
When and why do older adults show positive preferences in their gaze patterns, looking preferentially toward positive and away from some negative stimuli? The current study investigated the time course of older adults’ preferential fixation toward positive (happy) stimuli and away from negative (angry) stimuli to discern whether such patterns are more consistent with cognitive control or with simplified processing accounts of their origins. Positive preferences in older adults werefound to emerge only 500 ms and later after stimulus onset and increased linearly over time; this time course is consistent with a cognitive control account.
Age- and fatigue-related markers of human faces: An eye tracking study.
Purpose: To investigate the facial cues that are used when making judgments about how old or tired a face appears
Design: experimental study.
Participants: Forty-seven young adults were included in this study: 15 males (31.9%) and 32 females, ranging from age 18 to 30. Participants were recruited from the student population in the Boston area.
Methods: 48 full-face digital images of "normal appearing" patients were collected and uploaded to an Eye Tracking system. We used an ASL Eye Tracker 504 with a Magnetic Head Transmitter device associated with gaze-tracking software to record and calculate the gaze of the participants' left eye as they viewed the faces on a computer screen. After seeing each picture, participants were asked to assess the age of the face in the picture by making a selection on a rating scale divided into 5 year intervals; for fatigue judgments, participants were asked to rate how tired the individual in the picture appeared, using a rating scale from 1 (not tired) to 7 (most tired ).
Main Outcome Measures: The main outcome measure was gaze fixation, as assessed by tracking the eye movements of participants as they viewed full-face digital pictures, using an ASL Eye Tracker 504 system. We considered gaze patterns separately for age and fatigue judgments.
Results: For fatigue judgments, participants spent the most time looking at the eye region (31.81 %), then the forehead and the nose regions (14.99% and 14.12%, respectively); in the eye region, participants looked most at the brows (13.1%) and lower lids (9.4%). Participants spent more time looking at the cheeks on faces they rated as least tired than they did on those they rated as most tired (t= 2.079, p<0.05). For age judgments, participants looked most at the eye region (27.22%), and then the forehead (15.71%) and the nose (14.30%); in the eye region, the brows and lower lids also had the highest frequencies of interest (11.40% and 8.90%, respectively). Participants looked more at the brows (t= -2.63, p<0.05) and glabella (t=-3.28, p<0.01) in those faces they rated as looking the oldest.
Conclusion: This study supports the hypothesis that age and fatigue judgments are related to preferential attention towards the eye region. Consequently, these results suggest that aesthetic or functional surgery to the eye region may be one of the most effective interventions in enhancing the appearance of an individual.
Are preferences in emotional processing affected by distraction? Examining the age-related positivity effect in visual fixation within a dual-task paradigm.
Recent research has suggested that age-related positivity effects are eliminated under conditions of dual-task load (Knight et al., 2007; Mather & Knight, 2005), because the cognitive control resources necessary to enact such preferences are not available when individuals are distracted by competing information. We further examined how older adults’ emotional information processing preferences are affected by distracting information by utilizing a within-subjects dual-task measure. Younger and older adults viewed a series of positive, negative,
and neutral images both in conditions of full and divided attention. Fixation preferences to valenced images were assessed through eye tracking. Regardless of whether images were viewed in full or divided attention conditions, older adults demonstrated a preference in their fixation for positive and neutral in comparison to negative images. These results provide evidence that older adults’ positive fixation preferences may not always necessitate full, cognitive control.Looking while unhappy: Mood congruent gaze in young adults, positive gaze in older adults.
Recent findings that older adults gaze toward positively- and away from negatively-valenced stimuli have been interpreted as part of their attempts to achieve the goal of feeling good. However, the idea that gaze is used by older adults to regulate, rather than to simply reflect, mood is in contrast to evidence of mood-congruent processing in young adults; no study has directly linked age-related positive gaze preferences to mood regulation. In this study, older and younger adults in a range of moods viewed synthetic face pairs varying in valence as their gaze was tracked. Younger adults demonstrated mood-congruent gaze, looking more at positive faces when in a good mood and at negative faces when in a bad mood. Older adults displayed mood-incongruent positive gaze, looking toward positive and away from negative faces when in a bad mood, suggesting that older adults use gaze not to reflect mood but to regulate it.
Preferences for emotional information in older and younger adults: A meta-analysis of memory and attention tasks.
We conducted a meta-analysis to determine the magnitude of older and younger adults’ preferences for emotional stimuli in studies of attention and memory. Analyses involved 1,085 older adults from 37 independent samples and 3,150 younger adults from 86 independent samples. Both age groups exhibited small-to-medium emotion salience effects (i.e., preference for emotionally-valenced stimuli over neutral stimuli), as well as positivity preferences (i.e., preference for positively-valenced stimuli over neutral stimuli) and negativity preferences (i.e., preference for negatively-valenced stimuli to neutral stimuli). There were few age differences overall. Type of measurement appeared to influence the magnitude of effects; recognition studies indicated significant age effects where older adults showed smaller effects for emotion salience and negativity preferences than younger adults.
Looking happy: The experimental manipulation of a positive visual attention bias
Individuals with a positive visual attention bias may use their gaze to regulate their emotions while under stress. The current study experimentally trained differential biases in participants (N=55) attention towards positive or neutral information. In each training trial one positive and one neutral word were presented, then a visual target appeared consistently in the location of the positive or neutral words. Participants were instructed to make a simple perceptual discrimination response to the target. Immediately before and after attentional training, participants were exposed to a stress task consisting of viewing a series of extremely negative images while having their eyes tracked. Visual fixation time to negative images, assessed with an eye tracker, served as an indicator of using gaze to successfully regulate emotion. Those participants experimentally trained to selectively attend to affectively positive information looked significantly less at the negative images in the visual stress task following the attentional training, thus demonstrating a learned aversion to negative stimuli. Participants trained towards neutral information did not show this biased gaze pattern.
Age-related positivity enhancement is not universal: Older Chinese look away from positive stimuli.
Socioemotional selectivity theory postulates that with age, people are motivated to derive emotional meaning from life, leading them to pay more attention to positive relative to negative/neutral stimuli. We argue that cultures that differ in what they consider to be emotionally meaningful may show this preference to different extents. Using eyetracking techniques, we compared visual attention toward emotional (happy, fearful, sad and angry) and neutral facial expressions among 46 younger and 57 older Hong Kong Chinese. In contrast to prior Western findings, older, but not younger Chinese, looked away from happy facial expressions, suggesting that they do not show attentional preferences toward positive stimuli.
Age differences in recognition of emotion in lexical stimuli and facial expressions
Age differences in emotion recognition from lexical stimuli and facial expressions were examined in a cross-sectional sample of adults aged 18 to 85 (N = 357). Emotion-specific response biases differed by age: Older adults were disproportionately more likely to incorrectly label lexical stimuli as happiness, sadness, and surprise and to incorrectly label facial stimuli as disgust and fear. After these biases were controlled, findings suggested that older adults were less accurate at identifying emotions than were young adults, but the pattern differed across emotions and task types. The lexical task showed stronger age differences than the facial task, and for lexical stimuli, age groups differed in accuracy for all emotional states except fear. For facial stimuli, in contrast, age groups differed only in accuracy for anger, disgust, fear, and happiness. Implications for age-related changes in different types of emotional processing are discussed.
How optimists face skin cancer: Risk assessment, attention, memory, and behavior.
The purpose of the present study was to investigate how optimists process health-related information. Sixty-five young adults (ages 18-35) reported skin cancer-related knowledge and behaviors, and read slides of information on skin and skin cancer. Visual attention to the slides was recorded using eye tracking, and their memory for the information was measured. Additionally, participants' self-reported skin cancer-relevant behavior was assessed prospectively in the months following the lab component of the study. Results show that individuals low in dispositional optimism or high in health-related optimism paid more attention when they were at high objective risk of developing skin cancer; and individuals high in dispositional optimism or high in health-related optimism were more likely to perform adaptive, health-promoting behaviors. In addition, optimistic beliefs were found not to be related with unrealistic optimism. Dispositional and health-related optimism therefore appear to predict health-related cognition and behavior in distinct ways.
Motivated gaze: The view from the gazer
How does gaze relate to psychological properties of the gazer? Studies using eye tracking reveal robust group differences in gaze toward emotional information: Optimists gaze less at negative, unpleasant images than do pessimists, and older individuals look away from negative faces and toward happy faces. These group differences appear to reflect an underlying motivation to achieve and maintain good moods by directing attention to moodfacilitating stimuli. Maintaining a positive mood is only one goal-related context that influences visual attention; recent work has also suggested that other goal states can impact gaze. Gaze therefore is a tool of motivation, directing gazers toward stimuli that are consistent with their goals and away from information that will not facilitate goal achievement.
Is there an age-related positivity effect in visual attention? A comparison of two methodologies
Research suggests a positivity effect in older adults' memory for emotional material, but the evidence from the attentional domain is mixed. The present study combined 2 methodologies for studying preferences in visual attention, eye tracking and dot probe, as younger and older adults viewed synthetic emotional faces. Eye tracking most consistently revealed a positivity effect in older adults' attention, so that older adults showed preferential looking toward happy faces and away from sad faces. Dot-prove results were less robust, but in the same direction. Methodological and theoretical implications for the study of socioemotional aging are discussed.
Positive mood broadens visual attention to positive stimuli
In an attempt to investigate the impact of positive emotions on visual attention within the context of Fredrickson's (1998) broaden-and-build model, eye tracking was used in two studies to measure visual attentional preferences of college students (n = 58, n = 26) to emotional pictures. Half of each sample experienced induced positive mood immediately before viewing slides of three similarly-valenced images, in varying central-peripheral arrays. Attentional breadth was determined by measuring the percentage viewing time to peripheral images as well as by the number of visual saccades participants made per slide. Consistent with Fredrickson's theory, the first study showed that individuals induced into positive mood fixated more on peripheral stimuli than did control participants; however, this only held true for highly-valenced positive stimuli. Participants under induced positive mood also made more frequent saccades for slides of neutral and positive valence. A second study showed that these effects were not simply due to differences in emotional arousal between stimuli. Selective attentional broadening to positive stimuli may act both to facilitate later building of resources as well as to maintain current positive affective states.
Selective preference in visual fixation away from negative images in old age? An eye tracking study
Recent studies have suggested that older individuals selectively forget negative information. However, findings on a positivity bias in the attention of older adults have been more mixed. The current study, eye tracking was used to record visual fixation in nearly real-time to investigate whether older individuals indeed show a positivity bias in their visual attention to emotional information. Young and old individuals (N = 64) viewed pairs of synthetic faces that included the same face in a non-emotional expression and in 1 of 4 emotional expressions (happiness, sadness, anger, or fear). Gaze patterns were recorded as individuals viewed the face pairs. Older adults showed an attentional preference toward happy faces and away from angry ones; the only preference shown by young adults was toward afraid faces. The age groups were not different in overall cognitive functioning, suggesting that these attentional differences are specific and motivated rather than due to general cognitive change with age.
The effect of developmental regulation on visual attention: The example of the "Biological Clock".
As individuals approach developmental deadlines, the questions of what goals to pursue and how to pursue them become more urgent. Past work has investigated how explicit goals and implicit memory processes reflect motivation concerning developmental deadlines (J. Heckhausen, Wrosch, & Fleeson, 2001). The current study investigated a possible link between developmental regulation and attention to deadline-relevant stimuli by comparing women approaching the end of their childbearing years with women who had passed the deadline without successfully completing the goal.
An attentional application of socioemotional selectivity theory in college students
Socioemotional selectivity theory posits that emotions become increasingly salient as individuals approach endings. Recent findings have linked the theory with biases in information processing in the context of aging. However, these studies all confounded advancing age and the motivational impact of endings. This study represented an attempt to disentangle the effects of large age differences from those of endings on the processing of emotional information by investigating differences in attention to emotional stimuli between college seniors and college first-years. Seniors represented a group approaching the social ending of graduation from college and first-years served as a comparison group not facing an ending. Following recent findings in the literature on aging, it was hypothesized that seniors would selectively avoid negative images in an effort to better regulate their emotions in the face of this social ending. Firstyears were found to spend a significantly larger portion of their time viewing sad faces than did seniors. Seniors also exhibited significantly higher levels of positive affect than did first-years. These findings are discussed within the context of emotion regulation in the face of impending endings across the lifespan.
What is important to me now? Age differences in domain selectivity depend on the measure
Do older individuals have fewer important areas of life than their younger counterparts? While several recent theories of successful aging posit that selectivity in life domains and goal pursuits are important components of successful adult development and aging, it is not obvious how one would evaluate this claim empirically. The current study used four approaches to evaluate age differences in the number and content of life domains currently selected as important in an individual's life. Two open-ended and two non-open-ended tools were used; the primary result was that age differences in number of selected domains emerged on the open-ended measures but not the others. Age differences in content of domains differed across assessment tools as well, but were consistent with an age-related shift in focus toward group involvement and leisure activities. Implications for practitioners attempting to discern optimal levels of life engagement for older individuals are discussed.
Positive mood broadens visual attention to positive stimuli
In an attempt to investigate the impact of positive emotions on visual attention within the context of Fredrickson s (1998) broaden-and-build model, eye tracking was used in two studies to measure visual attentional preferences of college students (n=58, n=26) to emotional pictures. Half of each sample experienced induced positive mood immediately before viewing slides of three similarlyvalenced images, in varying central-peripheral arrays. Attentional breadth was determined by measuring the percentage viewing time to peripheral images as well as by the number of visual saccades participants made per slide. Consistent with Fredrickson s theory, the first study showed that individuals induced into positive mood fixated more on peripheral stimuli than did control participants; however, this only held true for highly-valenced positive stimuli. Participants under induced positive mood also made more frequent saccades for slides of neutral and positive valence. A second study showed that these effects were not simply due to differences in emotional arousal between stimuli. Selective attentional broadening to positive stimuli may act both to facilitate later building of resources as well as to maintain current positive affective states.
Aiming at happiness: How motivation affects attention to and memory for emotional images
Socioemotional Selectivity Theory (Carstensen, L. L., Isaacowitz, D. M., & Charles, S. T. (1999). American Psychologist, 54, 155-181) posits that older adults, and anyone else who perceive their time as limited, show a motivational shift toward emotion regulation which causes them to exhibit a positivity bias and negativity avoidance in attention and memory. We tested whether such amotivational shift can indeed cause changes in emotional processing by manipulating motivation in a sample of young adults. After the manipulation, participants looked at real-world images while their eye movements were tracked. It was found that participants motivated to regulate emotion attended less to negative than positive images and showed less looking time to all stimulus types compared to the other two conditions. No evidence was found linking the motivational manipulation to emotional memory.
Correlates of well-being in adulthood and old age: A tale of two optimisms
Are older adults more optimistic than younger adults, and does optimism relate to well-being differently across the adult lifespan? This study attempted to address these issues by testing the link between two optimism constructs, explanatory style and dispositional optimism, and well-being in a sample of 280 young, middle-aged and older adults. Consistent with socioemotional selectivity theory, older adults had more optimistic explanatory styles than their younger counterparts in the positive affiliation domain, and this effect remained significant after controlling for a number of demographic and affective covariates. In contrast, older individuals reported less optimistic explanatory styles for negative health/cognitive events. No age differences in dispositional optimism or pessimism remained after controlling for covariates. Main effects of negative affiliation explanatory style and dispositional optimism and pessimism were found in the prediction of well-being measures across age groups. However, no significant Age X Optimism interactions emerged in the prediction of depression or life satisfaction, providing no support for the assertion that optimism may relate to well-being differently at different times in the adult life span.
An attentional perspective on successful socioemotional aging: Theory and preliminary evidence
What are the information-processing mechanisms that underlie successful affect regulation across the life span? Recent evidence suggests a rather positive view of affect regulation in later life, and a socioemotional selectivity theory has been proposed as a motivational account that may help explain these findings. In particular, the theory argues that emotions and their regulations become more salient as people age. After reviewing recent evidence primarily concerning emotional memory in late life, theoretical rationale is presented for investigating the role of attention to emotional stimuli as a mechanism for understanding successful affect regulation across the adult life span. Then, a program of research using eye tracking to study these attentional processes is described, and initial results are presented suggesting that there may be both age and individual difference effects on attention to emotional stimuli in adulthood.
Two studies used eye tracking to investigate the attentional preferences of optimists and pessimists to negative emotional stimuli. In both studies, optimistic and pessimistic college students viewed 3 types of visual stimuli while having their eye movements tracked: skin cancer (melanoma) images, matched schematic line drawings, and neutral faces. In the first study, participants were asked to view the images naturally, whereas in the second study some participants received a relevance manipulation. Percent fixation time to the different images was measured. Optimists showed selective inattention to the skin cancer images, even after controlling for attention to matched schematic line drawings. This relationship remained significant in both studies, after controlling for the effects of neuroticism, affect, anxiety, relevance, and perceptual variables. These data suggest that optimists may indeed wear "rose-colored glasses" in their processing of information from the world.
Human strengths, culture and aging
Age and culture may both influence the nature and expression of human strengths, broadly defined as psychological processes predictive of adaptive life outcomes. This paper reviews studies on different aspects of human strengths across the life-span and within different cultures. Empirical findings reveal age differences in some human strengths, and the few relevant studies of aging in China suggest that different strengths may be important there than in Western cultures. Cultural differences in the relation between human strengths and successful aging are then discussed based on the assertion that Western and Eastern cultures have a divergent emphasis on independence and interdependence. Future study may try to unravel the role of human strengths and culture in the aging process to contribute to a more thorough understanding of successful aging.
Cognitive styles and psychological well-being in adulthood and old age
(from the chapter) Reviews literature and discusses the relationship between cognitive style and variance in successful aging and well-being in adulthood and old age. An emotion-centered definition of successful aging is used to match the dependent variables that tend to be used in studies of cognitive styles. This comprises a positive affective profile in which depressive symptoms and negative affect are minimal and positive affect and life satisfaction are moderate or high. Issues discussed include explanatory style for causes of events over the adult life span, dispositional optimism, personal optimism, selectivity about goals, social selectivity, hardiness and resilience in the fact of stress, perceptions of control, and wisdom. Despite research shortcomings, it is concluded that the following cognitive style elements may contribute to adult and old-age well-being: realistic explanatory style, absence of dispositional pessimism, selectivity in goal pursuit and social relations, a fair amount of hardiness, and expertise in the pragmatics of life (wisdom).
Positive and negative affect in very old age
The current study examined two issues involving the relationship between age and affect in very old age using data from men and women (aged 70 to 100+ years, M=85 years) in the Berlin Aging Study (BASE). The first issue was whether unique effects of age on positive and negative affect remained after we controlled for other variables that would be expected to relate to affect in late life. We found no unique effects of age after we controlled for demographic, personality, and health and cognitive functioning variables. Personality and general intelligence emerged as the strongest predictors of positive and negative affect. Second, we evaluated patterns within meaningful subgroups: young old versus oldest old and men versus women. Subgroup differences in predictor patterns were minimal. Although we accounted for much of the age-related variance in positive and negative affect, a significant amount of variance in the affect of older adults remained unexplained.
Socioemotional selectivity and mental health among trauma survivors in old age
Empirical tests of socioemotional selectivity theory support the contention that the developmental trend in adulthood to focus increasingly on fewer, but emotionally significant, social partners is associated positively with psychological well-being. Tenets of the theory, however, also suggest conditions in which selectivity could instead lead to an increase in negative emotional experiences. In particular, if the socioemotional world of the individual includes emotional distress, selective focus on emotions and close relationships may detract from rather than enhance well-being. In the current study, we examined selectivity and associated well-being in Holocaust survivors, Japanese-American internment camp survivors, and comparably-aged people who lived through World War II but did not experience major trauma. We predicted that selectivity would relate to positive mental health in all groups except the Holocaust survivors who, on average, experience elevated levels of negative affect and social networks that include other survivors also experiencing distress. Results generally supported these hypotheses, and are discussed in light of individual and group differences in socioemotional ageing, as well as the implications for the generality of social developmental theories of adaptive functioning.
Strengths and satisfaction across the adult lifespan
Positive psychology has recently developed a classification of human strengths (Peterson & Seligman, in press). We aimed to evaluate these strengths by investigating the strengths and life satisfaction in three adult samples recruited from the community (young adult, middle-aged, and older adult), as well as in the surviving men of the Grant study of Harvard graduates. In general, older adults had higher levels of interpersonal and self-regulatory strengths, whereas younger adults reported higher levels of strengths related to exploring the world. Grant study men tended to report lower strength levels than older adults from the community. Among the young adults, only hope significantly predicted life satisfaction, whereas among the middle-aged individuals, the capacity for loving relationships was the only predictor. Among community-dwelling older adults, hope, citizenship, and loving relationships all positively and uniquely predicted life satisfaction, compared with loving relationships and appreciation of beauty in the Grant sample.
Cognitive style predictors of affect change in older adults
Cognitive styles are the lenses through which individuals habitually process information from their environment. This study evaluated whether different cognitive style individual difference variables, such as explanatory style and dispositional optimism, could predict changes in affective state over time in 93 community-dwelling older adults (60-99 yrs old). Based on previous research, it was hypothesized that an optimistic explanatory style would be adaptive except when combined with life stressors, but that dispositional optimism would predict positive affective states regardless of life events. It was found that older adults with a more optimistic explanatory style for health/cognitive events actually appeared to develop more depressive symptoms over 6 mo follow-up. However, dispositional optimism and orientation toward the future predicted a better affective profile over time.
Examined 2 senses in which pessimism might be a risk factor for depressive mood among older adults. The 1st was that a pessimistic explanatory style would predict changes toward depressive mood when combined with stressful life events. The 2nd was that predictive pessimism, or thinking that bad events will happen in the future, would predict changes in depressive symptoms. Participants were 71 64-94 yr olds. Ss completed questionnaires that included measures of explanatory style, depressive mood, and life events. Approximately 1 mo later, 67 of the Ss completed the measures of depressive mood and life events. Six mo and 1 yr after the original interview, Ss reported on their depressive symptoms and on any life events experienced during that period. An interaction between explanatory style and life stressors was found, but it was the optimists who were at higher risk for depressive symptoms after negative life events. The authors also found support for predictive pessimism, however, as a predictor of depressive symptoms over time.
Applying science to human behavior
Responds to N. Abi-Hashem's (see record 2000-03002-010) comments on the Carstensen et al (see record 1999-10334-001) article arguing that time perception is integral to human motivation. The authors feel that the concerns raised by Abi-Hashem are concerns that could be voiced about any scientific attempt to study human behavior.
(from the chapter) Attempts to show linkages between emotion and cognition and to make the case that these connections are particularly important for research on cognitive aging. The discussion focuses on the ways in which emotion may influence cognitive processing in older adults. The authors review evidence that emotional functioning is well maintained in later life and is highly salient in mental representations, memory, social judgments, and motivation among older adults. The authors begin with a brief overview of studies examining the influence of emotion on cognition. Next, they present relevant empirical findings about age differences in emotional experience and review theories that predict an increased prominence of emotion in cognitive processing across adulthood. Finally, they suggest ways that emotional changes may influence performance on traditional cognitive tasks and consider alternative explanations for observed age differences. The authors conclude that a comprehensive understanding of either cognitive or emotional functioning in old age must include consideration of the interplay between the 2 constructs.
Taking time seriously: A theory of socioemotional selectivity
Socioemotional selectivity theory claims that the perception of time plays a fundamental role in the selection and pursuit of social goals. According to the theory, social motives fall into 1 of 2 general categories-those related to the acquisition of knowledge and those related to the regulation of emotion. When time is perceived as open-ended, knowledge-related goals are prioritized. In contrast, when time is perceived as limited, emotional goals assume primacy. The inextricable association between time left in life and chronological age ensures age-related differences in social goals. Nonetheless, the authors show that the perception of time is malleable, and social goals change in 20-83 yr olds when time constraints are imposed. The authors argue that time perception is integral to human motivation and suggest potential implications for multiple subdisciplines and research interests in social, developmental, cultural, cognitive, and clinical psychology.
