Faculty Sponsor, if applicable
Joseph A. Mikels
Project Abstract
Evidence suggests that older adults’ perception of faces is different from younger adults (Shuster, Mikels, & Camras, 2017). Younger adults perceive surprise faces as negative, whereas older adults perceive surprise faces as positive. This finding supports the idea that younger and older adults are associated with differing age-related affective biases. Specifically, younger adults tend to have a negativity bias that leads them to evaluate neutral information more negatively, but on the other hand, aging leads to attenuations in the negativity bias such that older adults experience a shift toward the positive: the positivity effect (Carstensen & Mikels, 2005). The current study took a data-driven approach aimed at exploring the emotional, personality, and health-related factors that may relate to older adults’ shift toward the positive in the perception of emotional faces.
Type of Research
Doctoral-Undergraduate Opportunity for Scholarship (DUOS)
Preview
Presentation Year
May 2019
