FEBRUARY 2007		

Accentuating the positive—why older people are happier

	Information processing functioning
steadily declines starting when people
reach their 20s. But as people get older,
they get better at regulating their
emotional health, according to psychology
professor Laura Carstensen, PhD,
founding director of the Stanford Center
on Longevity at Stanford University. She
described that model of aging at the
Henry and Bryna David Lecture at the
National Academy of Sciences Nov. 14
in Washington, D.C.
	Besides the lecture, which is fund-
ed by an endowment recognizing inno-
vative research in the behavioral and
social sciences, Carstensen’s paper is
published in the journal Issues in Science
and Technology, Winter 2007 issue.
	While acknowledging cognitive loss-
es that come with age, Carstensen point-
ed out that older people gain by building
expertise in different subjects and, with
practice, can pick up new knowledge just
as quickly as younger people.
	Psychological research about peo-
ple’s cognitive experience as they age
has gained importance because the aver-
age life span has increased from 47
years in 1900 to 77 in 2000.
Carstensen attributed the life expectan-
cy surge to various factors, including
developments in nutrition, a clean
water supply, garbage collection, sewage
treatment systems, vaccinations and the
prevention of communicable disease.
	“We designed a world in which
young people thrive,” she said. The side
effect of more children surviving child-
hood is healthier adults thriving into
their 70s and 80s, she said.
	Carstensen’s larger theory of how
the growing group of elderly lives out its
final decades is tied to socioemotional
selectivity theory; which holds that
people’s goals and cognitive functioning
are tied to their awareness of where they
stand in the life span.
	Younger people explore new expe-
riences with the belief that they’ve got
plenty of time to spare and long, nebu-
lous futures to prepare for. They are
often willing to tackle any cognitive
task just for the challenge. But for an
older person, the timeline shrinks with
the awareness of impending mortality.
Greater attention is paid to seeking
emotional rewards through meaningful
activities, she said.
	In one series of studies, Carstensen,
along with Susan Turk Charles, PhD,
and Mara Mather, PhD, presented
younger and older participants with a
series of positive, negative or neutral
images. The results showed that while
younger adults remembered both posi-
tive and negative images, older people
recalled more positive images than neg-
ative images. In another test, when pre-
sented with photos of people either
smiling or scowling, older people
remembered the smiling faces more
quickly, she said.
	That selective attention to the posi-
tive might explain why older people
report the least amount of distress in
day-to-day life, are less likely to be
depressed and experience lower rates of
phobia than younger people do, she said.
	Given that older people focus on the
positive, Carstensen said researchers can
find ways to better present information
to older adults making important deci-
sions, such as health plan enrollment.
Describing what a health plan covers, as
opposed to what’s not covered, would be
an example of that approach, she said.
—C. MUNSEY