- Positivity effect
In
psychology andcognitive science , the positivity effect is the tendency of people, when evaluating the causes of the behaviors of a person they like, to attribute "positive" behaviors to the person's inherent disposition and "negative" behaviors to situations surrounding the behaviors. The positivity effect is the inverse of the "negativity effect ", which is found when people evaluate the causes of the behaviors of a person they "dislike". Both effects areattributional bias es.The term "positivity effect" also refers to age differences in emotional attention and memory. Studies have found that older adults are more likely than younger adults to pay attention to positive than negative stimuli (as assessed by the
dot-probe paradigm and eye-tracking methods). In addition, compared with younger adults' memories, older adults' memories are more likely to consist of positive than negative information and more likely to be distorted in a positive direction. This version of the positivity effect was coined by Laura L. Carstensen's research team. [ [http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/312/5782/1913 The Influence of a Sense of Time on Human Development] . "Science", June 30, 2006.]ee also
*
list of cognitive biases
*list of memory biases Notes
References
* Taylor, S. E. & Koivumaki, J. H. (1976). The perception of self and others: Acquaintanceship, affect and actor-observer differences. "
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology " 33, 403-408.
* Mather, M., & Carstensen, L. L. (2005). Aging and motivated cognition: The positivity effect in attention and memory. "Trends in Cognitive Sciences" 9, 496-502. [http://www.usc.edu/projects/matherlab/pdfs/MatherCarstensen2005.pdf PDF]External links
* [http://www.usc.edu/projects/matherlab/s/emomem.html Positivity effect and cognitive control in aging]
* [http://psychology.stanford.edu/%7Elifespan/positivity.htm List of papers related to aging and positivity effect]
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