Psychological Development and Education ›› 2024, Vol. 40 ›› Issue (2): 196-206.doi: 10.16187/j.cnki.issn1001-4918.2024.02.06

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The Positivity Effect of Ambiguous Facial Expressions Recognition and Its Mechanism in Older Adults

YU Linwei1, LI Shuang2, LIU Shen3, PAN Wenpei1, XU Qiang1, ZHANG Lin1   

  1. 1. Department and Institute of Psychology, Ningbo University, Ningbo 315211;
    2. Kunshan No.1 High School, Suzhou 215300;
    3. Department of Psychology, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Anhui Agricultural University, Hefei 230036
  • Published:2024-03-18

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Abstract: Previous studies found an age-related shift away from negative information for older adults, known as the positivity effect. However, these studies largely utilize facial expressions with clear emotional meaning that does not capture the oft-ambiguous nature of real-world situations. Therefore, the present study aimed to investigate the positive effects of ambiguous expression recognition and its mechanisms in older adults. Study 1 showed that the accuracy difference between happy and angry ambiguous expressions was not significant among younger adults. Older adults recognized happy ambiguous expressions significantly more correctly than angry and sad ambiguous expressions. These results indicated a positive effect of ambiguous expression recognition in older adults. Study 2 further compared the differences in shift point and slope in identifying morphed expressions between younger and older adults, which reflected the response bias and perceptual sensitivity of expressions recognition. The results found that the shift points were significantly larger for younger adults than for older adults. In contrast, the slope difference between older and younger adults was not significant. The present study found a positivity effect on ambiguous expression recognition in older adults, which could be attributed to the response bias for positive expression.

Key words: older adults, facial expression recognition, positivity effect, response bias, sensitivity

CLC Number: 

  • B844
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