SAN_2010_Flanary&Norris_36x48 poster

Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff:

Age Differences in the Positivity Offset Kristin W. Flanary & Catherine J. Norris

Dartmouth College

Introduction

Method Participants:

• Younger (18-22 years) and older (65-80 years) females recruited from Dartmouth College

(younger) and the surrounding community (older)

Design: ● 168 IAPS (Lang, Bradley, & Cuthbert, 2005) pictures filled 7 valence categories (24 pictures each):

neutral; mildly, moderately, and very negative; and mildly, moderately, and very positive

● Pictures were matched on social content, visual properties and (female only) normative ratings of

arousal and extremity.

Results: Response Times

Discussion

Correspondence may be addressed to: kflanary@dartmouth.edu

Results: Emotional Biases

References

R

Results: Whole-Brain Regression

E16

Procedure: ● Participants viewed IAPS pictures during fMRI scans

● Following the fMRI task, participants rated each picture on

both positivity and negativity (0-4) using the Evaluative Space

Grid (ESG; Larsen, Norris, McGraw, Hawkley & Cacioppo,

2009)

Behavioral Analysis: Picture ratings were submitted to a 2

(Age: older, younger) x 2 (Valence: unpleasant, pleasant) x 4

(Extremity: neutral, mild, moderate, extreme) repeated-

measures ANOVA

Positive: 1

Negative: 0

Cacioppo, J. T., Gardner, W. L., & Berntson, G. G. (1997). Beyond bipolar conceptualizations and measures: The

case of attitudes and evaluative space. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 1, 3-25.

Lang, P. J., Bradley, M. M., & Cuthbert, B. N. (2005). International affective picture system (IAPS): Instruction

manual and affective ratings. Technical Report A-6, The Center for Research in Psychophysiology,

University of Florida.

Larsen, J., Norris, C., McGraw, A., Hawkley, L., & Cacioppo, J. (2009). The evaluative space grid: A single-item

measure of positivity and negativity. Cognition & Emotion , 23, 453-480.

Norris, C.J., Gollan, J., Berntson, G.G. & Cacioppo, J.T. (2010). The current structure of research on evaluative

space. Biological Psychology, 84, 422-436.

Mather, M. & Carstensen, L.L. (2005). Aging and motivated cognition: The positivity effect in attention and

memory. Trends in Cognitive Science, 9, 496-502.

Urry, H.L., van Reekum, C.M., Johnstone, T., Kalin, N.H., Thurow, M.E. et al. (2006). Amygdala and ventromedial

prefrontal cortex are inversely coupled during regulation of negative affect and predict the diurnal pattern

of cortisol secretion among older adults. The Journal of Neuroscience, 26, 4415-4425.

van Reekum, C.M., Schaefer, S.M., Lapate, R.C., Norris, C.J., Greischer, L.L., et al. (2010). Aging is associated

with positive responding to neutral information but reduced recovery from negative information. Social

Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. doi:10.1093/scan/nsq03

0

0.5

1

1.5

2

2.5

3

3.5

4

Neu Mild Mod VeryD

om

inan

t R

atin

gs

Older

Pleasant

Unpleasant

0

0.5

1

1.5

2

2.5

3

3.5

4

Neu Mild Mod Very

Do

min

ant

Rat

ings

Younger

Pleasant

Unpleasant

Picture ratings supported the predictions of the ESM, showing a significant

Valence x Extremity interaction, F(3,33) = 50.31, p < .001, such that neutral and

mildly pleasant pictures elicited a stronger response than unpleasant pictures

(i.e., a positivity offset), and moderately and very unpleasant pictures elicited a

stronger response than pleasant pictures (i.e., a negativity bias).

Compared to younger adults, older adults showed an extended positivity

offset and no difference in the negativity bias, F(3,33) = 9.53, p < .001.

The greater positivity offset exhibited by older adults was associated

with responses to mildly unpleasant pictures:

• Greater BA 10 activation

• Slower response times

• More positive ratings as a function of response time

Results suggest that:

• The positivity effect may be due in part to a greater positivity offset.

• Older adults may be regulating their responses to mildly

unpleasant stimuli in an attempt to “find the silver lining” (see Urry

et al., 2006).

The Evaluative Space Model (ESM; Norris et al., 2010; Cacioppo, Gardner &

Berntson, 1997) holds that positivity and negativity are separable and can vary

independently. Accordingly, the ESM predicts a negativity bias in extremely

emotional stimuli, in which stronger responses are elicited by very unpleasant

than very pleasant stimuli. It also predicts a positivity offset in mildly emotional

stimuli, such that stronger responses are elicited by mildly pleasant than mildly

unpleasant stimuli.

Negativity

Positivity

Stimulus

Intensity

low high

Response

Strength

P

O

NB

Figure 1. Theoretical predictions of the Evaluative Space Model

(Norris et al., 2010; Cacioppo, Gardner & Berntson, 1997)

Older adults (e.g, 65-80 yrs) have demonstrated a “positivity effect” such that older

adults seem more predisposed toward positivity than younger adults (e.g, Mather &

Carstensen, 2005). However, the underlying mechanisms of the positivity effect

remains unclear. van Reekum et al. (2010) found that adults demonstrated

increased positive responding to neutral stimuli with older age. Thus, an increased

positivity offset may be one underlying mechanism of the positivity effect seen in

aging.

This study directly compared positive and negative responses to emotional

stimuli in order to investigate 1) whether older adults show an increased

positivity offset relative to younger adults, and 2) the neural mechanisms

underlying this increased positivity offset.

r = p < .01, corrected

(33, -61, -5)

Ple

as

- U

np

l (B

A 1

0)

Pleas – Unpl (ratings)

P > UP

P > UP UP > P

UP > P

-0.20

-0.15

-0.10

-0.05

0.00

0.05

0.10

0.15

0.20

MildlyUnpleasant

Mildly Pleasant

Mea

n A

UC

% S

ign

al

Ch

an

ge

Older

Younger

-0.10

-0.05

0.00

0.05

0.10

0.15

0.20

0.25

0.30

0.35

MildlyUnpleasant

MildlyPleasant

Resp

on

se T

ime z

-sco

res

Older

Younger

fMRI Data Acquisition and Analysis:

● A full set of 36 axial slices (3.5mm thick, 0.5mm gap, interleaved) was collected on a Philips 3.0 T

Achieva Intera scanner every 2 s (TR = 2000 ms, TE = 35 ms, flip angle = 90°, FOV = 24 cm, 80 x

80 matrix size, fat suppressed).

● Positivity offset (PO) scores for picture ratings and neural activation were calculated (mildly pleasant

– mildly unpleasant) for use in a whole-brain voxel-wise regression analysis. POneural was regressed

on POratings, predicting a neural PO from the behavioral PO.

POratings scores were negatively correlated with a cluster in left BA 10, r = -.83, p <

.001. That is, greater POratings scores were associated with greater BA 10

activation to mildly unpleasant than mildly pleasant pictures.

Data extracted from BA 10 were submitted to a 2 (Age: older, younger) x 2

(Valence: mildly unpleasant, mildly pleasant) repeated-measures ANOVA. A

significant Age x Valence interaction, F(1,15) = 8.06, p = .01, indicated that,

compared to younger adults, older adults showed greater BA 10 activation to

mildly unpleasant pictures.

Response times were also submitted to a 2 (Age: older, younger) x 2 (Valence:

mildly unpleasant, mildly pleasant) repeated-measures ANOVA . A significant Age

x Valence interaction revealed that older adults took longer to rate mildly

unpleasant pictures than younger adults, F(1,35) = 5.95, p < .05. Moreover,

older adults showed a positive correlation between response times and positive

ratings of mildly unpleasant pictures, r = .58, p = .01. That is, the longer older

adults took to rate mildly unpleasant pictures, the more positively they

rated them.

Positiv

e R

atings

z-scored Response Times

Mildly Unpleasant