Self-relevance has been demonstrated to impair instrumental learning. Compared to unfamiliar symbols associated with a friend, analogous stimuli linked with the self are learned more slowly. What is not yet understood, however, is whether this effect extends beyond arbitrary stimuli to material with intrinsically meaningful properties. Take, for example, stimulus valence an established moderator of self-bias. Does the desirability of to-be-learned material influence self-learning? Here, in conjunction with computational modelling (i.e. Reinforcement Learning Drift Diffusion Model analysis), a probabilistic selection task (...) was used to establish if and how stimulus valence (i.e. desirable/undesirable posters) impacts the acquisition of knowledge relating to object-ownership (i.e. owned-by-self vs. owned-by-friend). Several interesting results were observed. First, undesirable posters were learned more rapidly for self compared to friend, an effect that was reversed for desirable posters. Second, learning rates were accompanied by associated differences in reward sensitivity toward desirable and undesirable choice selections as a function of ownership. Third, decisional caution was greater for self-relevant (vs. friend relevant) responses. Collectively, these findings inform understanding of self-function and how valence and stimulus relevance mutually influence probabilistic learning. (shrink)

McKay & Dennett (M&D) suggest that some positive illusions are adaptive. But there is a bidirectional link between memory and positive illusions: Biased autobiographical memories filter incoming information, and self-enhancing information is preferentially attended and used to update memory. Extending M&D's approach, I ask if certain false memories might be adaptive, defending a broad view of the psychosocial functions of remembering.

Aging at work is a dynamic process. As individuals age, their motives, abilities and values change as suggested by life-span development theories (Kanfer & Ackerman, 2004; Lang & Carstensen, 2002). Their growth and extrinsic motives weaken while intrinsic motives increase (Kooij, De Lange, Jansen, Kanfer, & Dikkers, 2011), which may result in workers investing their resources in different areas accordingly. However, there is significant individual variability in aging trajectories (Hedge, Borman, & Lammlein, 2005). In addition, the changing nature of work, (...) the evolving job demands, as well as the available opportunities at work may no longer be suitable for older workers, increasing the likelihood of person-job misfit. The potential misfit may, in turn, impact how older workers perceive themselves on the job, which leads to conflicting work identities. With the traditional job redesign approach being a top-down process, it is often difficult for organizations to take individual needs and skills into consideration and tailor jobs for every employee (Berg, Dutton, & Wrzesniewski, 2010). Therefore, job crafting, being an individualized process initiated by employees themselves, can be a particularly valuable mechanism for older workers to realign and enhance their demands-abilities and needs-supplies fit. Through job crafting, employees can exert personal agency and make changes to the task, social and cognitive aspects of their jobs with the goal of improving their work experience (Wrzesniewski & Dutton, 2001). Building on the Life Span Theory of Control (Heckhausen & Schulz, 1995), we posit that job crafting, particularly cognitive crafting, will be of increasing value as employees age. Through reframing how they think of their job and choosing to emphasize job features that are personally meaningful, older workers can optimize their resources to proactively redesign their jobs and maintain congruent, positive work identities. (shrink)

In this article we argue that self-deception evolved to facilitate interpersonal deception by allowing people to avoid the cues to conscious deception that might reveal deceptive intent. Self-deception has two additional advantages: It eliminates the costly cognitive load that is typically associated with deceiving, and it can minimize retribution if the deception is discovered. Beyond its role in specific acts of deception, self-deceptive self-enhancement also allows people to display more confidence than is warranted, which has a host of social advantages. (...) The question then arises of how the self can be both deceiver and deceived. We propose that this is achieved through dissociations of mental processes, including conscious versus unconscious memories, conscious versus unconscious attitudes, and automatic versus controlled processes. Given the variety of methods for deceiving others, it should come as no surprise that self-deception manifests itself in a number of different psychological processes, and we discuss various types of self-deception. We then discuss the interpersonal versus intrapersonal nature of self-deception before considering the levels of consciousness at which the self can be deceived. Finally, we contrast our evolutionary approach to self-deception with current theories and debates in psychology and consider some of the costs associated with self-deception. (shrink)

Older adults prefer positive over negative information in a lab setting, compared to young adults. The extent to which OA avoid negative events or information relevant for their health and safety is not clear. We first investigated age differences in preferences for fear-enhancing vs. fear-reducing news articles during the Ebola Outbreak of 2014. We were able to collect data from 15 YA and 13 OA during this acute health event. Compared to YA, OA were more likely to read the fear-enhancing (...) article, select hand-sanitizer over lip balm, and reported greater fear of Ebola. We further investigated our research question during the COVID-19 pandemic with 164 YA and 171 OA. Participants responded to an online survey about the COVID-19 pandemic across 13 days during the initial peak of the pandemic in the United States. Both YA and OA preferred to read positive over negative news about the coronavirus, but OA were even more likely than YA to prefer the positive news article. No age differences in the fear of contraction were found, but OA engaged in more health-protective behaviors compared to YA. Although OA may not always report greater fear than YA or seek out negative information related to a health concern, they still engage in protective health behaviors. Thus, although positivity effects were observed in attention and emotional reports, OA still modified their behaviors more than YA, suggesting that positivity effects did not hamper OA ability to respond to a health crisis. (shrink)

There is increasing interest in clarifying how different face emotion expressions are perceived by people from different cultures, of different ages and sex. However, scant availability of well-controlled emotional face stimuli from non-Western populations limit the evaluation of cultural differences in face emotion perception and how this might be modulated by age and sex differences. We present a database of East Asian face expression stimuli, enacted by young and older, male and female, Taiwanese using the Facial Action Coding System (FACS). (...) Combined with a prior database, this present database consists of 90 identities with happy, sad, angry, fearful, disgusted, surprised and neutral expressions amounting to 628 photographs. 20 young and 24 older East Asian raters scored the photographs for intensities of multiple-dimensions of emotions and induced affect. Multivariate analyses characterized the dimensionality of perceived emotions and quantified effects of age and sex. We also applied commercial software to extract computer-based metrics of emotions in photographs. Taiwanese raters perceived happy faces as one category, sad, angry, and disgusted expressions as one category, and fearful and surprised expressions as one category. Younger females were more sensitive to face emotions than younger males. Whereas older males showed reduced face emotion sensitivity, older female sensitivity was similar or accentuated relative to young females. Commercial software dissociated six emotions according to the FACS demonstrating that defining visual features were present. Our findings show that East Asians perceive a different dimensionality of emotions than Western-based definitions in face recognition software, regardless of age and sex. Critically, stimuli with detailed cultural norms are indispensable in interpreting neural and behavioral responses involving human facial expression processing. To this end, we add to the tools, which are available upon request, for conducting such research. (shrink)

Almost self-fulfilling, commonly held negative stereotypes about old age and memory can impair older adults’ episodic memory performance, due to age-based stereotype threat or self-stereotyping effects. Research studies demonstrating detrimental impacts of age stereotypes on memory performance are generally conducted in research laboratories or medical settings, which often underestimate memory abilities of older adults. To better understand the “real world” impact of negative age and memory stereotypes on episodic memory, the present research tested story recall performance of late middle-aged and (...) older adults following a naturalistic age stereotype manipulation, wherein every day, newspaper-style materials were either embedded with negative age and memory stereotype stimuli or neutral stimuli. Furthermore, all participants were tested in favorable, familiar environments. Potential moderators of the stereotype effects, e.g., metamemory beliefs, were assessed at baseline. Current memory evaluation and subjective age, as well as perceived stereotype threat and task-related anxiety, were assessed following the stereotype manipulation as potential mechanisms of the expected stereotype effects. Results suggested a contrast effect, as the stereotype group demonstrated superior story recall performance compared to the control group. Marginally significant moderation effects by age and perceived stereotype threat indicated that stereotype rejection was present for late middle-aged adults but not older adults, indicative of stereotype lift, and for individuals who reported low and average, but not high, levels of perceived stereotype threat. Additionally, a trend suggested more positive memory evaluation for those in the stereotype group who reported awareness of the stereotype stimuli than those who did not notice the stimuli. These results are consistent with other research demonstrating benefits to memory performance in adulthood based on motivational and contextual factors, such as using relevant memory materials and testing in favorable conditions. Moreover, the results of this study contribute to our understanding of individuals’ responses to different types of stereotype stimuli, and the differential impact of stereotype manipulations that are subtle versus blatant. Individuals were motivated to counteract negative stereotype effects when conditions were supportive, stereotype presentations were naturalistic, and personal beliefs were positive. (shrink)

Decision-making competence in later adulthood is affected by declines in cognitive skills, and age-related changes in affect and experience can sometimes compensate. However, recent findings suggest that age-related changes in motivation also affect the extent to which adults draw from experience, affect, and deliberative skills when making decisions. To date, relatively little attention has been given to strategies for addressing age-related changes in motivation to promote better decisions in older adults. To address this limitation, we draw from diverse literatures to (...) suggest promising intervention strategies for motivating older recipients’ motivation to make better decisions. We start by reviewing the life-span developmental literature, which suggests that older adults’ motivation to put effort into decisions depends on the perceived personal relevance of decisions as well as their self-efficacy (i.e., confidence in applying their ability and knowledge). Next, we discuss two approaches from the health intervention design literature, the mental models approach and the patient activation approach, which aim to improve motivation for decision making by improving personal relevance or by building self-efficacy or confidence to use new information and skills. Using examples from these literatures, we discuss how to construct interventions to motivate good decisions in later adulthood. (shrink)

The tendency for individuals to interpret ambiguous information in a threatening way is theorised to maintain anxiety disorders. Recent findings suggest that positive and negative interpretation bi...

ABSTRACTThe attentional blink is the impaired ability to detect a second target when it follows shortly after the first among distractors in a rapid serial visual presentation...

Earlier work has demonstrated that attention is indirectly cognitively malleable by processes of self-association – processes by which agents explicitly associate an item with the self. We extend this work by considering the manipulation of attention to both salient and non-salient objects. We demonstrate that self-association impacts attentional processing not only of non-salient objects, but also regarding salient items known to command attention. This result indicates the flexibility and susceptibility of attentional processing to cognitive manipulation.

As the COVID-19 pandemic was unfolding, a surge in scams was registered across the globe. While COVID-19 poses higher health risks for older adults, it is unknown whether older adults are also facing higher financial risks as a result of COVID-19 scams. Here, we examined age differences in vulnerability to COVID-19 scams and individual difference measures that might help explain them. A lifespan sample of sixty-eight younger, 79 middle-aged, and 63 older adults recruited through Prolific completed questions and questionnaires online. (...) In a within-subjects design, each participant responded to five COVID-19 solicitations, psychological measures, and demographic questions. Age group comparisons revealed that older adults were marginally less likely to perceive COVID-19 solicitations as genuine than middle-aged adults were. In addition, older adults perceived significantly fewer benefits than both younger and middle-aged adults did and perceived marginally higher risks than younger adults did. Hence, older adults did not exhibit greater vulnerability to COVID-19 scams. Regardless of age, intentions to respond to COVID-19 solicitations were positively predicted by higher levels of educational attainment, being married, past fraud victimization, and higher levels of positive urgency. As expected, stronger genuineness and benefit perceptions positively predicted action intentions, whereas stronger risk perceptions negatively predicted action intentions As such, COVID-19 scam susceptibility appears to be the result of a impulse control issue that is not easily inhibited, not even by past experiences of scam victimization. (shrink)

Previous studies reported that consumers choose a higher number of options in subtractive framing, which delete the unnecessary options from the full model with all options chosen than in additive framing, which adds options to a simple base model. The purposes of this study are to examine the effect of age on option framing and the differences of product type on the option framing effect using two product scenarios. Participants were 40 younger and 40 older adults. We measured the number (...) of options chosen, total price, choice difficulty, and choice satisfaction. In addition, cognitive functions were assessed. Results revealed that older and younger adults chose more options in the -OF condition for both the scenarios. For the medical examination, older adults chose more options than did the younger adults in both -OF and +OF conditions. Developmental shift in goals and motivation related to life-span may explain the differences between the age differences. (shrink)

Recent work in the psychology of happiness has led some to conclude that we are unreliable assessors of our lives and that skepticism about whether we are happy is a genuine possibility worth taking very seriously. I argue that such claims, if true, have worrisome implications for procreation. In particular, they show that skepticism about whether many if not most people are well positioned to create persons is a genuine possibility worth taking very seriously. This skeptical worry should not be (...) confused with a related but much stronger version of the argument, which says that all human lives are very bad and not worth starting. I criticize the latter stance, but take seriously the former stance and hope it can be answered in future work. (shrink)

Information on age-related differences in affective meanings of words is widely used by researchers to study emotions, word recognition, attention, memory, and text-based sentiment analysis. To date, no Chinese affective norms for older adults are available although Chinese as a spoken language has the largest population in the world. This article presents the first large-scale age-related affective norms for 2,061 four-character Chinese words (AANC). Each word in this database has rating values in the four dimensions, namely, valence, arousal, dominance, and (...) familiarity. We found that older adults tended to perceive positive words as more arousing and less controllable and evaluate negative words as less arousing and more controllable than younger adults did. This indicates that the positivity effect is reliable for older adults who show a processing bias toward positive vs. negative words. Our AANC database supplies valuable information for researchers to study how emotional characteristics of words influence the cognitive processes and how this influence evolves with age. This age-related difference study on affective norms not only provides a tool for cognitive science, gerontology, and psychology in experimental studies but also serves as a valuable resource for affective analysis in various natural language processing applications. (shrink)

Though emotion conveys memory benefits, it does not enhance memory equally for all aspects of an experience, nor for all types of emotional events. In this review, I outline the behavioral evidence for arousal's focal enhancements of memory and describe the neural processes that may support those focal enhancements. I also present behavioral evidence to suggest that these focal enhancements occur more often for negative experiences than for positive ones. This result appears to arise because of valence-dependent effects on the (...) neural processes recruited during episodic encoding and retrieval, with negative affect associated with increased engagement of sensory processes, and positive affect leading to enhanced recruitment of conceptual processes. (shrink)

Emotion is critical for cultural dynamics, that is, for the formation, maintenance, and transformation of culture over time. We outline the component micro- and macro-level processes of cultural dynamics, and argue that emotion not only facilitates the transmission and retention of cultural information, but also is shaped and crafted by cultural dynamics. Central to this argument is our understanding of emotion as a complete information package that signals the adaptive significance of the information that the agent is processing. It captures (...) an agent’s appraisal about the relationship between themself and the object of emotional focus, as well as action orientation and allostasis in context. We discuss implications of this perspective in the context of the changing natural and geopolitical environment, and future cultural dynamics into the 21st century. (shrink)

ABSTRACTRemembering to perform a behaviour in the future, prospective memory, is essential to ensuring that people fulfil their intentions. Prospective memory involves committing to memory a cue to action, and later recognising and acting upon the cue in the environment. Prospective memory performance is believed to be influenced by the emotionality of the cues, however the literature is fragmented and inconsistent. We conducted a systematic search to synthesise research on the influence of emotion on prospective memory. Sixty-seven effect sizes were (...) extracted from 17 articles and hypothesised effects tested using three meta-analyses. Overall, prospective memory was enhanced when positively-valenced rather than neutral cues were presented. In contrast, negatively-valenced cues did not enhance prospective memory overall, but this effect was moderated by the timing of the emotional manipulation. Prospective memory performance was improved when negatively-valenced... (shrink)

Motivational and emotional changes across adulthood have a profound impact on cognition. In this registered report, we conducted an experimental investigation of motivational influence on remembering intentions after a delay (prospective memory; PM) in younger, middle-aged, and older adults, using gain- and loss-framing manipulations. The present study examined for the first time whether motivational framing in a PM task has different effects on younger and older adults’ PM performance (N = 180; age range: 18–85 years) in a controlled laboratory setting. (...) Based on lifespan theories of motivation, we assumed that the prevention of losses becomes more relevant with increasing age: We expected that older adults show relatively higher PM performance in a task with loss-related consequences following PM failure than in a task in which successful PM leads to gains. The opposite pattern of performance was expected for younger adults. The findings suggest that the relevance of reward and positive gain-related consequences for successful remembering appears to decrease with age. As hypothesised, a motivational framing × age interaction indicated that age differences in memory performance were smaller with loss-related than gain-related consequences, supporting a loss-prevention view on motivated cognition. (shrink)

Based on a 12-year bibliographic record collected from the Web of Science database, the present study aims to provide a macroscopic overview of the knowledge domain in financial decision making. A scientometric and bibliometric analysis was conducted on the literature published in the field from 2010 to 2021, using the CiteSpace software. The analysis focuses on the co-occurring categories, the geographic distributions, the vital references, the distribution of topics, as well as the research fronts and emerging trends of financial related (...) decision making. The steady increase of papers published year by year demonstrated the increasing interest on this topic at the international level. The scientometric analysis of the literature showed that financial decision, investment decision, and financing decision stood out of the crowd of the research on FDM, suggesting their important role in FDM and its research. The results of citation burst analysis predicted the focus of topics, i.e., the impact of individual differences such as financial literacy, gender and age on FDM in the coming years. Different from the traditional approach of literature review, this bibliometric analysis offers a scientometric approach to reveal the status quo and the development trend of FDM by macro and quantitative means. In addition, future research directions for the field are recommended. (shrink)

Music can reduce stress and anxiety, enhance positive mood, and facilitate social bonding. However, little is known about the role of music and related personal or cultural variables in maintaining wellbeing during times of stress and social isolation as imposed by the COVID-19 crisis. In an online questionnaire, administered in 11 countries, participants rated the relevance of wellbeing goals during the pandemic, and the effectiveness of different activities in obtaining these goals. Music was found to be the most effective activity (...) for three out of five wellbeing goals: enjoyment, venting negative emotions, and self-connection. For diversion, music was equally good as entertainment, while it was second best to create a sense of togetherness, after socialization. This result was evident across different countries and gender, with minor effects of age on specific goals, and a clear effect of the importance of music in people's lives. Cultural effects were generally small and surfaced mainly in the use of music to obtain a sense of togetherness. Interestingly, culture moderated the use of negatively valenced and nostalgic music for those higher in distress. (shrink)

This study aimed to define the psychological markers for future development of depression symptoms following the lockdown caused by the COVID-19 outbreak. Based on previous studies, we focused on loneliness, intolerance of uncertainty and emotion estimation biases as potential predictors of elevated depression levels. During the general lockdown in April 2020, 551 participants reported their psychological health by means of various online questionnaires and an implicit task. Out of these participants, 129 took part in a second phase in June 2020. (...) Subjective loneliness during the lockdown rather than objective isolation was the strongest predictor of symptoms of depression 5 weeks later. Younger age and health related worry also predicted higher non-clinical levels of depression and emotional distress. The results support the diathesis-stress model, which posits that a combination of preexisting vulnerabilities along with stressors such as negative life events are among the factors affecting the development of psychopathology. Moreover, our results correspond with those of previous studies conducted worldwide during the COVID-19 pandemic. Taken together, these findings call for focusing on psychological factors, especially among younger people, to identify individuals at risk for future development of depression and to promote new strategies for prevention. (shrink)