| David Terraso
Institute Communications and Public Affairs
New research from Georgia Tech suggests the effect
of mood on how people process information changes greatly
as they age. The study offers a window into the changing
nature of the aging mind and the way it handles emotion
and information.
Researchers from Tech’s School
of Psychology’s Adult Development lab examined
how younger and older adults who were induced into a
positive or negative mood interpreted the actions of
others. They found that older adults in a negative mood
were more likely than younger adults to attribute the
actions of an individual to that person alone, rather
than considering that situational factors may be affecting
their actions. This correspondence bias suggests that,
when in a negative mood, older adults are more internally
focused on maintaining an emotionally satisfying experience
and thus have difficulty processing external information.
“It may be the case that older adults in a negative
mood state are more motivated to downgrade their negative
emotions and not allocate enough processing time to
focus on the details of the situation. So this needs
to be taken into consideration when imparting information
to older adults,” said Fredda Blanchard-Fields,
a professor in the School of Psychology.
One situation where this knowledge might be useful
is when a doctor has to tell a patient they have a serious
illness.
“You want to give them time to deal with the
fact that they have the illness, to deal with the emotions
before you have them make a decision on how to treat
it,” she said.
That’s very different from the way young people
handle information. When in a negative mood, the study
found young adults were more likely to consider situational
factors when assessing an individual’s behavior.
Younger adults may not have the same motivational tendencies
and thus can tolerate negative emotions more easily
and focus on the details of the task, suggesting they
are more externally focused when in a negative mood.
Researchers recruited young adults between 18-28 years
of age and older adults whose ages ranged between 59-80
years.
These findings seem to support other research suggesting
that as people age, they become more interested in regulating
their emotions and eliminating negativity.
“Older adults may be captured by the negativity
and, therefore, focus attention on emotion regulation,”
said Blanchard-Fields. “Therefore, they focus
attention on emotion regulation rather than focusing
attention on the details that they need to internalize.
So it’s a dual task for them.”
When positive moods were induced, the roles were reversed.
This time, the younger adults were more likely to be
less focused and exhibit the correspondence bias.
“Here we see that younger people tend to become
more lax and lose focus; whereas, older people are more
likely to focus on the task they are completing,”
said Andy Mienaltowski, graduate researcher and lead
author of the study.
“So it shows that the young and old are motivated
by different goals and, therefore, perceive and process
information differently because of the changes in goals
across the lifespan,” said Blanchard-Fields.
The next study for the research team will be comparing
the effects of negative mood on cognition in younger
and older adults. The latest study appears in the journal
Psychology
and Aging.
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