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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Is there a paradox of aging
— when the negative aging stereotype meets the positivity effect in older adults | | Author(s) | Liqing Zhou, Jia Lu, Guopeng Chen |
| Journal title | Experimental Aging Research, vol 43, no 1, January-February 2017 |
| Publisher | Taylor and Francis, January-February 2017 |
| Pages | pp 80-93 |
| Source | http://www.tandfonline.com |
| Keywords | Young adults [20-25] ; Age groups [elderly] ; Ageism ; Comparison ; China. |
| Annotation | 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 prioritising positive information processing. The authors explored whether the positivity effect appeared when the negative ageing stereotype was activated in older adults, and also whether the effect differed between mixed and unmixed conditions. Sixty younger (age 18-23) and 60 older (age 60-87) Chinese adults were randomly assigned to a control group and a priming group, in which the negative ageing stereotype was activated. All the participants were asked to select 15 words that best described older people from a mixed-word list (positive and negative words mixed together) and from an unmixed-word list (positive and negative words separated). Older adults in the control group selected more positive words, whereas among younger adults, selection did not differ between 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. The authors calculated the differences between the numbers of positive and negative words. They found that 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 ageing stereotype, the negative stereotype effect was dominant. Future research should explore the changes in the positivity effect in the face of a positive ageing stereotype and what roles other factors (e.g., activation level of the stereotype, arousal level of affective words) might play. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-170224221 A |
| Classmark | SD6: BB: B:TOB: 48: 7DC |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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