Date of Award
2019
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Science
Department
Psychology
Abstract
The Socioemotional Selectivity Theory (SST) posits that as their future time perspective shrinks, older adults tend to be more motivated by emotionally meaningful goals and therefore experience what is called the “positivity effect” with age (Carstensen, 2006). The positivity effect had been studied in both attention biases (Isaacowitz et al., 2006a) and memory biases (Kensinger, 2008), with older adults dwelling longer on and better remembering the positive stimuli over the negative. Yet, few studies have measured emotional biases at both the encoding and retrieval phases, which is why this study uses eye-tracking to determine whether any biases in gaze patterns map directly onto memory biases
Recommended Citation
Wolfe, Hannah, "When does the positivity effect emerge? : age-related emotional biases at encoding and retrieval" (2019). Honors Theses. 1399.
https://scholarship.richmond.edu/honors-theses/1399