Derek M. Isaacowitz

TAKING TIME SERIOUSLY : A THEORY OF SOCIOEMOTIONAL SELECTIVITY

Socioemotional selectivity theory claims that the perception of time plays a fundamental role in the selection and pursuit of social goals. According to the theory, social motives fall into 1 of 2 general categories--those related to the acquisition of knowledge and those related to the regulation of emotion. When time is perceived as open-ended, knowledge-related goals are prioritized. In contrast, when time is perceived as limited, emotional goals assume primacy. The inextricable association between time left in life and chronological age ensures age-related differences in social goals. Nonetheless, the authors show that the perception of time is malleable, and social goals change in both younger and older people when time constraints are imposed. The authors argue that time perception is integral to human motivation and suggest potential implications for multiple subdisciplines and research interests in social, developmental, cultural, cognitive, and clinical psychology.

Selective preference in visual fixation away from negative images in old age? An eye-tracking study.

Recent studies have suggested that older individuals selectively forget negative information. However, findings on a positivity effect in the attention of older adults have been more mixed. In the current study, eye tracking was used to record visual fixation in nearly real-time to investigate whether older individuals show a positivity effect in their visual attention to emotional information. Young and old individuals (N = 64) viewed pairs of synthetic faces that included the same face in a nonemotional expression and in 1 of 4 emotional expressions (happiness, sadness, anger, or fear). Gaze patterns were recorded as individuals viewed the face pairs. Older adults showed an attentional preference toward happy faces and away from angry ones; the only preference shown by young adults was toward afraid faces. The age groups were not different in overall cognitive functioning, suggesting that these attentional differences are specific and motivated rather than due to general cognitive change with age.

Age differences in recognition of emotion in lexical stimuli and facial expressions.

Age differences in emotion recognition from lexical stimuli and facial expressions were examined in a cross-sectional sample of adults aged 18 to 85 (N = 357). Emotion-specific response biases differed by age: Older adults were disproportionately more likely to incorrectly label lexical stimuli as happiness, sadness, and surprise and to incorrectly label facial stimuli as disgust and fear. After these biases were controlled, findings suggested that older adults were less accurate at identifying emotions than were young adults, but the pattern differed across emotions and task types. The lexical task showed stronger age differences than the facial task, and for lexical stimuli, age groups differed in accuracy for all emotional states except fear. For facial stimuli, in contrast, age groups differed only in accuracy for anger, disgust, fear, and happiness. Implications for age-related changes in different types of emotional processing are discussed.

Looking While Unhappy Mood-Congruent Gaze in Young Adults, Positive Gaze in Older Adults

Recent findings that older adults gaze toward positively valenced stimuli and away from negatively valenced stimuli have been interpreted as part of their attempts to achieve the goal of feeling good. However, the idea that older adults use gaze to regulate mood, and that their gaze does not simply reflect mood, stands in contrast to evidence of mood-congruent processing in young adults. No previous study has directly linked age-related positive gaze preferences to mood regulation. In this eye-tracking study, older and younger adults in a range of moods viewed synthetic face pairs varying in valence. Younger adults demonstrated mood-congruent gaze, looking more at positive faces when in a good mood and at negative faces when in a bad mood. Older adults displayed mood-incongruent positive gaze, looking toward positive and away from negative faces when in a bad mood. This finding suggests that in older adults, gaze does not reflect mood, but rather is used to regulate it.

Fixing Our Focus: Training Attention to Regulate Emotion

Empirical studies have frequently linked negative attentional biases with attentional dysfunction and negative moods; however, far less research has focused on how attentional deployment can be an adaptive strategy that regulates emotional experience. The authors argue that attention may be an invaluable tool for promoting emotion regulation. Accordingly, they present evidence that selective attention to positive information reflects emotion regulation and that regulating attention is a critical component of the emotion regulatory process. Furthermore, attentional regulation can be successfully trained through repeated practice. The authors ultimately propose a model of attention training methodologies integrating attention-dependent emotion regulation strategies with attention networks. Although additional interdisciplinary research is needed to bolster these nascent findings, meditative practices appear to be among the most effective training methodologies in enhancing emotional well-being. Further exploration of the positive and therapeutic qualities of attention warrants the empirical attention of social and personality psychologists.

The Gaze of the Optimist

Two studies used eye tracking to investigate the attentional preferences of optimists and pessimists to negative emotional stimuli. In both studies, optimistic and pessimistic college students viewed three types of visual stimuli while having their eye movements tracked: skin cancer (melanoma) images, matched schematic line drawings, and neutral faces. In the first study, participants were asked to view the images naturally, whereas in the second study, some participants received a relevance manipulation. Percentage of fixation time to the different images was measured. Optimists showed selective inattention to the skin cancer images, even after controlling for attention to matched schematic line drawings. This relationship remained significant in both studies after controlling for the effects of neuroticism, affect, anxiety, relevance, and perceptual variables. These data suggest that optimists may indeed wear “rose-colored glasses” in their processing of information from the world.

Mechanisms of motivation-cognition interaction : challenges and opportunities

Recent years have seen a rejuvenation of interest in studies of motivation–cognition interactions arising from many different areas of psychology and neuroscience. The present issue of Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience provides a sampling of some of the latest research from a number of these different areas. In this introductory article, we provide an overview of the current state of the field, in terms of key research developments and candidate neural mechanisms receiving focused investigation as potential sources of motivation–cognition interaction. However, our primary goal is conceptual: to highlight the distinct perspectives taken by different research areas, in terms of how motivation is defined, the relevant dimensions and dissociations that are emphasized, and the theoretical questions being targeted. Together, these distinctions present both challenges and opportunities for efforts aiming toward a more unified and cross-disciplinary approach. We identify a set of pressing research questions calling for this sort of cross-disciplinary approach, with the explicit goal of encouraging integrative and collaborative investigations directed toward them.

Linking Process and Outcome in the Study of Emotion and Aging

Current theory and research on emotion and aging suggests that (a) older adults report more positive affective experience (more happiness) than younger adults, (b) older adults attend to and remember emotionally valenced stimuli differently than younger adults (i.e., they show age-related positivity effects in attention and memory), and (c) the reason that older adults have more positive affective experience is because the positivity effects they display serve as emotion regulatory strategies. It is suggested that age differences in cognitive processes therefore lead to the outcome of positive affective experience. In this article, we critically review the literature on age differences in positive affective experience and on age-related positivity effects in attention and memory. Furthermore, we question the extent to which existing evidence supports a link between age-related positivity effects and positive affective outcomes. We then provide a framework for formally testing process-outcome links that might explain affective outcomes across adulthood. It may be that older adults (and others) do sometimes use their cognition as a regulatory tool to help them feel good, but that can only be demonstrated by specifically linking cognitive processes, such as age-related positivity effects, with affective outcomes. These concepts have implications for cognition–emotion links at any age.

Use of gaze for real-time mood regulation: effects of age and attentional functioning.

Older adults show positive preferences in their gaze toward emotional faces, and such preferences appear to be activated when older adults are in bad moods. This suggests that age-related gaze preferences serve a mood regulatory role, but whether they actually function to improve mood over time has yet to be tested. We investigated links between fixation and mood change in younger and older adults, as well as the moderating role of attentional functioning. AgexFixationxAttentional Functioning interactions emerged such that older adults with better executive functioning were able to resist mood declines by showing positive gaze preferences. Implications for the function of age-related positive gaze preferences are discussed.

Motivated Gaze: The View From the Gazer

How does gaze relate to psychological properties of the gazer? Studies using eye tracking reveal robust group differences in gaze toward emotional information: Optimists gaze less at negative, unpleasant images than do pessimists, and older individuals look away from negative faces and toward happy faces. These group differences appear to reflect an underlying motivation to achieve and maintain good moods by directing attention to mood-facilitating stimuli. Maintaining a positive mood is only one goal-related context that influences visual attention; recent work has also suggested that other goal states can impact gaze. Gaze therefore is a tool of motivation, directing gazers toward stimuli that are consistent with their goals and away from information that will not facilitate goal achievement.