Is There a Paradox of Aging: When the Negative Aging Stereotype Meets the Positivity Effect in Older Adults

Background/Study Context: Socioemotional selectivity theory (SST) states that the positivity effect is a result of older adults' emotion regulation and that older adults derive more emotional satisfaction from prioritizing positive information processing. The authors explored whether the positivity effect appeared when the negative aging stereotype was activated in older adults and also whether the effect differed between mixed and unmixed valence conditions.

Sixty younger (18-23 years of age) and 60 older (60-87 years of age) adults were randomly assigned to a control group and a priming group, in which the negative aging stereotype was activated. All the participants were asked to select 15 words that best described the elderly from a mixed-word list (positive and negative words were mixed together) and from an unmixed-word list (positive and negative words were separated).

Older adults in the control group selected more positive words, whereas among younger adults, selection did not differ by valence in either the mixed- or unmixed-word list conditions. There were no differences between the positive and negative word choices of the younger and older adults in the priming group. We calculated the differences between the numbers of positive and negative words, and the differences in the older adults' word choices were larger than those among the younger adults; the differences were also larger in the control group than in the priming group.

The positivity effect worked by choosing positive stimuli rather than avoiding negative stimuli. The role of emotion regulation in older adults was limited, and when the positivity effect faced the effect of the negative aging stereotype, the negative stereotype effect was dominant. Future research should explore the changes in the positivity effect in the face of a positive aging stereotype and what roles other factors (e.g., activation level of the stereotype, arousal level of affective words) might play.