Centre for Policy on Ageing



Age differences in memory for emotional messages — do older people always remember the positive?
Author(s)	Helene H Fung, Lilian Y T Tang
Journal title	Ageing International, vol 30, no 3, Summer 2005
Pages	pp 245-262
Source	http://www.transactionpub.com
Keywords	Publicity ; Memory and Reminiscence ; Cognitive processes ; Age groups [elderly] ; Young adults [20-25] ; Comparison ; Hong Kong.
Annotation	Theories and empirical research in the Western literature suggest that with age, people are more motivated to derive emotional meaning from life, and one way of doing so is to disproportionately remember the positive in life. This bias - known as positivity bias - was examined in 91 younger (age 18-27) and 94 older (age 52-85) Hong Kong Chinese, by presenting them with health-promoting messages that had the same content but different background music. The authors found that Hong Kong Chinese remembered the most information from messages with negative, relative to positive or neutral, background music. Younger adults did not show these biases. These results are in contrast to previous findings obtained in the West. (RH).
Accession Number	CPA-070115202 A
Classmark	U7: DB: DA: BB: SD6: 48: 7DR
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...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing.