Age differences in rapid attention to emotional stimuli are driven more by valence than by discrete emotions

In a pattern known as the positivity effect, older adults tend to prioritize positive over negative information in attention and memory compared to younger adults. Traditional theories attribute this effect to age-related shifts toward positive emotions, and it is typically operationalized as a two-by-two interaction between age (younger vs. older) and valence (negative vs. positive). Alternative accounts, however, suggest that discrete emotions within valence categories may differentially drive the effect. To test this, from June to July 2023, younger adults (n = 101) and older adults (n = 108) completed an emotion-induced blindness task online. In each task trial, an emotional distractor image appeared shortly before a task-relevant target in a rapid stream of images. Emotional distractors depicted scenes of fear, disgust, excitement, contentment, or were emotionally neutral. We measured distraction from the emotional images and found minimal age-related differences between trials with different discrete emotion categories, but the positivity effect was evident when we compared across negative and positive valence categories. These findings suggest that valence, rather than discrete emotions, drives the positivity effect in attention. We discuss insights gained, limitations of our approach, and generalizability of our results to understand age-related changes in emotional prioritization. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).