Implicit and explicit measures of positivity effect in the elderly adults

The positivity effect can be defined as an age-related attentional preference for positive information. Previous research has investigated the positive effect through explicit measurements. To our knowledge, no study examined both implicit and explicit measurements. The main aim of the present study was to examine the positivity effect in older adults compared with younger adults, using both implicit and explicit measures. Fifty-nine younger (23 males and 36 females), age range 20–35, and 55 elderly (21 males and 34 females), age range 68–89, healthy adults participated in this study. As an explicit measure of the positivity effect, the index of optimism measured with the Life Orientation Test was used; as an implicit measure of the positivity effect, the Implicit Association Test was used. The results indicated that the older adults showed a higher optimism index than the younger adults. Also, the older adults showed a higher standardized difference on positive emotions compared with negative emotions, whereas the younger group showed an opposite trend. the present study confirms previous findings on positivity effect in the older adults and contributes preliminary evidence that suggests the positivity effect can be observed also when the experimental tasks do not explicitly address participants how processing the information and the task elicits an automatic processing of information.