Adult age differences in frequency estimations of happy and angry faces

With increasing age, the ratio of gains to losses becomes more negative, which is reflected in expectations that positive events occur with a high likelihood in young adulthood, whereas negative events occur with a high likelihood in old age. Little is known about expectations of social events. Given that younger adults are motivated to establish new social relations, they should be vigilant towards signals of opportunities for socializing, such as smiling faces. Older adults, who are particularly motivated to avoid negative encounters, should be vigilant towards negative social signals, such as angry faces. Thus, younger adults should overestimate the occurrence of positive social signals, whereas older adults should overestimate the occurrence of negative social signals. Two studies (Study 1: n = 91 younger and n = 89 older adults; Study 2: n = 50 younger and n = 50 older adults) partly supported these hypotheses using frequency estimates of happy and angry faces. Although both younger and older adults overestimated the frequency of angry compared to happy faces, the difference was significantly more pronounced for older adults. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0165025414542838 Posted at the Zurich Open Repository and Archive, University of Zurich ZORA URL: https://doi.org/10.5167/uzh-97622 Accepted Version Originally published at: Nikitin, Jana; Freund, Alexandra M (2015). Adult age differences in frequency estimations of happy and angry faces. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 39(3):266-274. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0165025414542838 Running Head: FREQUENCY ESTIMATIONS OF EMOTIONAL FACES 1 Adult Age Differences in Frequency Estimations of Happy and Angry Faces Jana Nikitin & Alexandra M. Freund University of Zurich Author Note Jana Nikitin is now at the Arctic University of Norway, Department of Psychology, Toerifagbygget hus 5, 9037 Tromsø, Norway; E-mail: [email protected]. Alexandra M. Freund, University of Zurich, Department of Psychology and University Research Priority Program Dynamics of Healthy Aging, Binzmuehlestrasse 14/11, 8050 Zurich, Switzerland; Email: [email protected]. Correspondence concerning this article may be addressed to either of the authors. This research was supported by Grant 100014_126868/1 (Project „Social Approach and Avoidance Motive – The Role of Age“) from the Swiss National Science Foundation (PIs: Jana Nikitin & Alexandra M. Freund). We thank the Life-Management team for helpful discussions of the work reported in this paper, and Christian Gross, Eva Deutschmann, and Thekla Schulze for their help with data collection. FREQUENCY ESTIMATION OF EMOTIONAL FACES 2