ABSTRACT
As we discussed in Chapter 12, older adults may be more likely than young adults to attend to positive information in the environment. This effect often has been referred to as a “positivity effect,” although there are debates about whether this effect is best characterized by a focus on the positive or by an avoidance of the negative (Blanchard-Fields, 2005; Mather, 2006). This positivity effect appears, at least in some instances, to alter the valence of information that older adults remember best. In particular, the effect results in interactions between age and valence, with older adults remembering proportionally more positive items than young adults, but proportionally fewer negative items than young adults (e.g., Charles, Mather, & Carstensen, 2003; Kennedy, Mather, & Carstensen, 2004).
