Positivity Effect
Age-Related Positivity Effect
The age-related tendency to favor positive over negative information in attention and memory, with older adults disproportionately attending to and recalling positive stimuli compared to younger adults.
Origin
Laura Carstensen, a psychologist at Stanford University and founding director of the Stanford Center on Longevity, identified the effect with collaborator Mara Mather in their 2003 paper "Aging and Attentional Biases for Emotional Faces" in Psychological Science. They found that older adults disproportionately attended to positive information. Carstensen explained this through her socioemotional selectivity theory: as people perceive their remaining time as limited, they prioritize emotionally meaningful and positive experiences over information-gathering goals.
Everyday Use
Grandparents often remember the past more fondly than their younger relatives do — not because things were necessarily better, but because aging shifts what the brain pays attention to. As people get older, they tend to notice and remember the positive while letting go of the negative. It's why older adults often report higher life satisfaction despite facing genuine challenges.