Now you see it, now you don't: The age-related positivity effect to faces disappears in naturalistic settings

There is an age-related positivity effect in attention to emotional faces. However, all of these studies have relied on computer tasks where people are directed to look at faces on a screen. The primary aim of this study was to test whether the age-related positivity effect to emotional faces emerges under more naturalistic settings. The secondary aim was to test whether an own-age bias exists in attention to emotional faces and whether task ecological validity moderates any observed effect. Younger and older adults completed a naturalistic positivity effect task where they sat in a waiting room with emotional faces on the walls while their eye-gaze behavior was monitored with a mobile eye-tracker. They also completed a computer-based task that involved viewing pairs of emotional faces on a screen while wearing a mobile eye-tracker. As predicted, a positivity effect emerged in the computer-based task where older adults looked less at negative faces compared to younger adults, but no age-related positivity bias emerged in the naturalistic task. In addition, younger adults showed an own-age bias in attention to faces, and this was strongest in the naturalistic task. There was no evidence of an own-age bias in older adults for either task. These findings highlight the importance of considering ecological validity in studies of attention and emotional aging. Implications and future directions are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).