ArticleCurrent opinion in behavioral sciences2018
The positivity effect: a negativity bias in youth fades with age.
Article in Current opinion in behavioral sciences, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 138 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
138 citing papers in PubMed.
- How COVID-19 News Affect Older Adults' Mental Health-Evidence of a Positivity Bias.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2023Trial
- Intranasal oxytocin modulates the salience network in aging.NeuroImage · 2022Trial
- Trial
- Semantic relatedness and distinctive processing may inflate older adults' positive memory bias.Memory & cognition · 2019Trial
- Conceptualizing psychological capacity.The journal of nutrition, health & aging · 2026Article
- Cognitive Aging Patterns in Autism: Parallel, Accelerated, or Safeguarded?Journal of autism and developmental disorders · 2026Article
- Does receiving positive or negative feedback change our memories about a decision we made?Cognitive processing · 2026Article
- Does Age Matter? A Comparison of Personality Profiles in Adult and Older Patients with Cancer Using the Structural Analysis of Social Behavior (SASB).Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Confronting finitude and treatment adherence in older adults with chronic diseases: a qualitative study.BMC geriatrics · 2026Article
- The Roles of Age and Depression in Affective Responsivity to Daily Positive Events.Research square · 2026Article
- Acute stress impairs visual narrative comprehension in younger but not older adults.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- About time? The role of time perspective in the priority for positive over negative emotion in attention.Cognition & emotion · 2026Article
- Psychometric validation and measurement invariance of the Polish Multi-Affect Indicator across diverse demographic and occupational groups.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- How social media use and abuse are related to social cognition and loneliness in older adults.European journal of ageing · 2026Article
- Edible Cannabis and Pain, Sleep, and Mental Health Management in Older Adults.JAMA network open · 2026Article
- Age differences in rapid attention to emotional stimuli are driven more by valence than by discrete emotions.Emotion (Washington, D.C.) · 2026Article
- Facing ambiguity: What we do in the space between stimulus and response.Current directions in psychological science · 2026Article
- Psychiatry in transition: an assessment in the context of societal change.Annals of general psychiatry · 2026Article
- The effect of age on the architecture of psychological and cognitive dimensions: a network perspective.European journal of ageing · 2026Article
- Consciousness, subjectivity, and aging in western thought.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2026Review
78 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Relative to younger adults, older adults attend to and remember positive information more than negative information. This shift from a negativity bias in younger age to a preference for positive information in later life is termed the 'positivity effect.' Based on nearly two decades of research and recent evidence from neuroscience, we argue that the effect reflects age-related changes in motivation that direct behavior and cognitive processing rather than neural or cognitive decline. Understanding the positivity effect, including conditions that reduce and enhance it, can inform effective public health and educational messages directed at older people.
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.