Holding on to pieces of the past: Daily reports of nostalgia in a life-span sample.

Nostalgia, the fond remembrance of one's past, is a common experience hypothesized to increase across the life span. Yet data on the specific features of nostalgia, such as daily frequency and associated affect, are scarce. This study sought to address this limitation by assessing the daily experience of nostalgia using experience-sampling methods. A life-span sample of 108 participants (47 young, 31 middle-aged, and 30 older adults) completed a 2-week, twice-daily experience-sampling study that yielded data describing the frequency and emotions of everyday nostalgia. Multilevel logistic regression analyses supported increased nostalgia frequency at every life stage: Young adults were 60% less likely to report nostalgia compared with middle-aged adults (odds ratio [OR] = .40), whereas older adults were 3 times more likely than middle-aged adults to report nostalgia (OR = 3.05). Additionally, the experience of nostalgia was associated with significant heterogeneity in positive and negative affect. Approximately 72% of participants experienced an increase in positive affect, and 51% experienced an increase in negative affect. For young and middle-aged adults, a change in positive affect was associated with a 2-times-larger increase in nostalgia likelihood, whereas a change in negative affect was more strongly associated with a nostalgia experience in older adults. The current study provides increased evidence for the affectively mixed nature of nostalgia and how the affective pattern differs for adults of different ages. Greater nostalgia frequency may be instrumental during life review when individuals make meaning of their lives, fulfilling developmental goals of late adulthood. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Age similarities in matching pro- and contra-hedonic emotional strategies to everyday scenarios.

Older adults are motivated to maximize positive affect in the present. Young adults will purposely feel negative and high arousal emotions in order to achieve a goal. However, this type of contra-hedonic emotional alignment has not been extensively studied with older adults. We expected older adults are less likely than young adults to select high arousal and negative emotions within specific scenarios where those states could be useful. In two studies, participants selected the emotion they preferred in hypothetical problems that varied on the arousal and valence best suited for goal achievement. Young and older adults were equally likely to endorse affective strategies that matched both pro and contra-hedonic scenarios. While older adults may be generally motivated to avoid negative and high-arousing emotions, they are just as likely as young adults to indicate that these states could be helpful in certain situations.

Introducing a Face Sort Paradigm to Evaluate Age Differences in Emotion Perception.

OBJECTIVES: Previous research has uncovered age-related differences in emotion perception. To date, studies have relied heavily on forced-choice methods that stipulate possible responses. These constrained methods limit discovery of variation in emotion perception, which may be due to subtle differences in underlying concepts for emotion. METHOD: We employed a face sort paradigm in which young (N = 42) and older adult (N = 43) participants were given 120 photographs portraying six target emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and neutral) and were instructed to create and label piles, such that individuals in each pile were feeling the same way. RESULTS: There were no age differences in number of piles created, nor in how well labels mapped onto the target emotion categories. However, older adults demonstrated lower consistency in sorting, such that fewer photographs in a given pile belonged to the same target emotion category. At the same time, older adults labeled piles using emotion words that were acquired later in development, and thus are considered more semantically complex. DISCUSSION: These findings partially support the hypothesis that older adults' concepts for emotions and emotional expressions are more complex than those of young adults, demonstrate the utility of incorporating less constrained experimental methods into the investigation of age-related differences in emotion perception, and are consistent with existing evidence of increased cognitive and emotional complexity in adulthood.

Ageism and Behavior Change During a Health Pandemic: A Preregistered Study.

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a suspected surge of ageism in America and has imposed critical health and safety behavior modifications for people of all ages (Ayalon et al., 2020; Lichtenstein, 2020). Given that older adults are a high-risk group, maintaining their safety has been paramount in implementing preventive measures (i.e., more handwashing, social distancing); however, making such behavior modifications might be contingent on how one views older adults (i.e., ageist stereotypes). Therefore, the goal of the current pre-registered study was to explore if hostile and benevolent ageism relate to pandemic-related fear and behavior change. An online survey assessing responses to the pandemic was taken by 164 younger and 171 older adults. Higher hostile ageism predicted lower pandemic-related behavior modification. Those high in benevolent ageism reported lower behavior change, but also reported higher pandemic-related fear; however, when pandemic-related fear was considered a mediator between the two, the directionality between benevolent ageism and behavior change switched, indicating a suppression effect. These findings highlight that ageist attitudes do predict responses to the pandemic and that hostile and benevolent ageism are distinct facets that have unique implications during a health pandemic.

Age Differences in Preferences for Fear-Enhancing Vs. Fear-Reducing News in a Disease Outbreak.

Older adults (OA) prefer positive over negative information in a lab setting, compared to young adults (YA; i.e., positivity effects). The extent to which OA avoid negative events or information relevant for their health and safety is not clear. We first investigated age differences in preferences for fear-enhancing vs. fear-reducing news articles during the Ebola Outbreak of 2014. We were able to collect data from 15 YA and 13 OA during this acute health event. Compared to YA, OA were more likely to read the fear-enhancing article, select hand-sanitizer over lip balm, and reported greater fear of Ebola. We further investigated our research question during the COVID-19 pandemic with 164 YA (18-30 years) and 171 OA (60-80 years). Participants responded to an online survey about the COVID-19 pandemic across 13 days during the initial peak of the pandemic in the United States (U.S.). Both YA and OA preferred to read positive over negative news about the coronavirus, but OA were even more likely than YA to prefer the positive news article. No age differences in the fear of contraction were found, but OA engaged in more health-protective behaviors compared to YA. Although OA may not always report greater fear than YA or seek out negative information related to a health concern, they still engage in protective health behaviors. Thus, although positivity effects were observed in attention and emotional reports (in the COVID-19 study), OA still modified their behaviors more than YA (giveaway in both studies, and health-protective behavior change in the COVID-19 study), suggesting that positivity effects did not hamper OA ability to respond to a health crisis.

"We" Before "Me": Differences in Usage of Collectivistic and Individualistic Language Influence Judgments of Electability and Performance.

OBJECTIVES: Older adults are often judged to be warm, but not competent, which contradicts their representation in positions of authority. This study sought to extend evidence of age differences in more individualistic (e.g., "I") and collectivistic (e.g., "we") language and explore their impact on judgments of performance and electability. METHOD: Speeches from young and older adults who campaigned for a fictitious position were analyzed using Linguistic and Inquiry Word Count Software. Words fitting specified categories (e.g., pronouns, affect) were compared to outcome judgments obtained from trained coders on the dimensions of performance and electability. RESULTS: Older adults used significantly more "we"-language. Young adults used more "I"-language, and more positive affect, achievement, and power language. Language choices and coder judgments were associated such that the more "I"-language that was used during the speech, the less electable the candidate was judged. This relationship was not found for "we"-language. DISCUSSION: This study found no evidence for collectivistic language enhancing ratings of electability or performance; however, an age-invariable, negative relationship was obtained between increased individualistic language and reduced coder judgments of electability. This suggests that speakers should minimize "I"-statements to promote electability, a characteristic that is reflected more in older adults' speeches than young.

A comparison of the effectiveness of two types of deceit detection training methods in older adults.

BACKGROUND: In general, people are poor at detecting deception. Older adults are even worse than young adults at detecting deceit, which might make them uniquely vulnerable to certain types of financial fraud. One reason for poor deceit detection abilities is that lay theories of cues to deception are not valid. This study compared the effectiveness of two training methods to improve deceit detection among older adults: valid facial cues versus valid verbal cues to deception. Approximately 150 older adults were randomly assigned to facial training, verbal training, or a control condition. Participants completed a pre-test deceit detection task, their assigned training, and a post-test deceit detection task. RESULTS: Both training groups significantly improved at recognizing their respectively trained cues after training. However, the facial cue training group were less accurate at detecting deception post-test compared to pre-test and the control group exhibited improved accuracy of deceit detection from pre-test to post-test. CONCLUSIONS: These results are consistent with the body of literature on deception suggesting people hover around chance accuracy, even after training. Older adults' facial and verbal cue recognition can be improved with training, but these improvements did not translate into more accurate deceit detection, and actually hampered performance in the facial condition. Older adults showed the most benefit from sheer practice at detecting deception (in the control condition), perhaps because this condition encouraged implicit rather than explicit judgments of deception.

An Age-Friendly University (AFU) assists with technology learning and social engagement among older adults and individuals with developmental disabilities.

As an Age-Friendly University (AFU), University of Akron is striving to support lifelong learning. A collaborative research effort developed between aging researchers at the university and a government-sponsored pilot program aimed to provide learning opportunities for older adults (OA) and engagement for individuals with developmental disabilities (IDD). The present study assessed the success of a pilot program to increase comfort with technology and community engagement. OA and IDD participants met twice a month for 9 months to discuss how to use technology (e.g., an IPad). We assessed satisfaction, perceived changes in comfort with technology, perceived changes in connection with others, and motivations for participating with questionnaires and a structured interview. On average, participants reported very high satisfaction with the group, and moderate increases in comfort with technology and how connected they feel to others as a result of participating in the group. The most common motivations for participation were related to values, strengthening social ties, seeking to learn, and bringing joy to others. These findings suggest that the pilot was successful at improving community engagement. The involvement of the university in the assessment of this pilot program situates the university as an age-friendly partner for community efforts to support lifelong learning.

Caring more and knowing more reduces age-related differences in emotion perception.

Traditional emotion perception tasks show that older adults are less accurate than are young adults at recognizing facial expressions of emotion. Recently, we proposed that socioemotional factors might explain why older adults seem impaired in lab tasks but less so in everyday life (Isaacowitz & Stanley, 2011). Thus, in the present research we empirically tested whether socioemotional factors such as motivation and familiarity can alter this pattern of age effects. In 1 task, accountability instructions eliminated age differences in the traditional emotion perception task. Using a novel emotion perception paradigm featuring spontaneous dynamic facial expressions of a familiar romantic partner versus a same-age stranger, we found that age differences in emotion perception accuracy were attenuated in the familiar partner condition, relative to the stranger condition. Taken together, the results suggest that both overall accuracy as well as specific patterns of age effects differ appreciably between traditional emotion perception tasks and emotion perception within a socioemotional context.

Age-related differences in judgments of inappropriate behavior are related to humor style preferences.

Identifying social gaffes is important for maintaining relationships. Older adults are less able than young to discriminate between socially appropriate and inappropriate behavior in video clips. One open question is how these social appropriateness ratings relate to potential age differences in the perception of what is actually funny or not. In the present study, young, middle-aged, and older adults were equally able to discriminate between appropriate and inappropriate social behavior in a diverse set of clips relevant across age groups. However, young and middle-aged adults rated the gaffe clips as funnier than control clips and young adults smiled more during the inappropriate clips than the control clips. Older adults did not show this pattern, suggesting that they did not find the inappropriate clips funny. Additionally, young adults endorsed a more aggressive humor style than middle-aged and older adults and aggressive humor style endorsement mediated age differences in social appropriateness ratings. Results are discussed in terms of possible mechanisms such as cohort differences in humor and developmental prioritization of certain humor styles, as well as the importance of investigating age differences in both abilities and preferences.

Cultural differences in gaze and emotion recognition: Americans contrast more than Chinese.

We investigated the influence of contextual expressions on emotion recognition accuracy and gaze patterns among American and Chinese participants. We expected Chinese participants would be more influenced by, and attend more to, contextual information than Americans. Consistent with our hypothesis, Americans were more accurate than Chinese participants at recognizing emotions embedded in the context of other emotional expressions. Eye-tracking data suggest that, for some emotions, Americans attended more to the target faces, and they made more gaze transitions to the target face than Chinese. For all emotions except anger and disgust, Americans appeared to use more of a contrasting strategy where each face was individually contrasted with the target face, compared with Chinese who used less of a contrasting strategy. Both cultures were influenced by contextual information, although the benefit of contextual information depended upon the perceptual dissimilarity of the contextual emotions to the target emotion and the gaze pattern employed during the recognition task.

Bringing an Ecological Perspective to the Study of Aging and Recognition of Emotional Facial Expressions: Past, Current, and Future Methods.

Older adults perform worse on traditional tests of emotion recognition accuracy than do young adults. In this paper, we review descriptive research to date on age differences in emotion recognition from facial expressions, as well as the primary theoretical frameworks that have been offered to explain these patterns. We propose that this is an area of inquiry that would benefit from an ecological approach in which contextual elements are more explicitly considered and reflected in experimental methods. Use of dynamic displays and examination of specific cues to accuracy, for example, may reveal more nuanced age-related patterns and may suggest heretofore unexplored underlying mechanisms.

Age-related differences in profiles of mood-change trajectories.

As a group, older adults report positive affective lives. The extent to which there are subgroups of older adults whose moods are less positive, however, is unclear. Our aim in the present study was to identify and characterize different subgroups of adults who exhibit distinct trajectories of mood change across a relatively short time period. Seventy-nine young and 103 older adults continuously reported their moods while viewing emotional and neutral faces. Cluster analysis revealed four subgroups of mood-change trajectories. Both the most positive and the most negative subgroups included more older than young adults (ps < .05), suggesting that not all older adults exhibit higher positive affect than young adults. Analyses of variance revealed that the most negative group exhibited slower processing speed, more state anxiety and neuroticism, and looked less at happy faces than the other groups (ps < .05). The results are discussed from an adult developmental perspective, focusing on the increased variability of mood trajectories in the older adults and whether this is a reflection of adaptive functioning or a potential harbinger of dysfunction.

Beliefs about behavior account for age differences in the correspondence bias.

OBJECTIVES: Older adults tend to exhibit the correspondence bias to a greater extent than young adults. The current study examined whether these age differences are a function of the degree to which an individual subscribes to a lay theory of attitude-behavior consistency. METHODS: First, participants responded to questions regarding their beliefs about attitude-behavior consistency. Approximately 2 weeks later, 144 (67 young adults and 77 older adults) participants completed the correspondence bias task. RESULTS: As expected, older adults were more biased than young adults. Analyses revealed that the degree to which an individual holds attitude-behavior consistency beliefs in the dishonesty domain accounted for age-related differences in the correspondence bias. DISCUSSION: The results of this study suggest that age differences in the correspondence bias task are in part driven by older adults holding stronger attitude-behavior consistency beliefs than young adults.

Challenges older adults face in detecting deceit: the role of emotion recognition.

Facial expressions of emotion are key cues to deceit (M. G. Frank & P. Ekman, 1997). Given that the literature on aging has shown an age-related decline in decoding emotions, we investigated (a) whether there are age differences in deceit detection and (b) if so, whether they are related to impairments in emotion recognition. Young and older adults (N = 364) were presented with 20 interviews (crime and opinion topics) and asked to decide whether each interview subject was lying or telling the truth. There were 3 presentation conditions: visual, audio, or audiovisual. In older adults, reduced emotion recognition was related to poor deceit detection in the visual condition for crime interviews only.