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Category: Project

Description: Despite the prevalence and importance of resting state thought for daily functioning and psychological well-being, it remains unclear whether older age is associated with altered affective tone of language during unprompted contexts. Age-related differences in this phenomenon could be a novel manifestation of the positivity effect, with¬¬¬¬ implications for well-being. To examine this possibility, a total of 77 young adults (M = 24.9 yrs, 18-35 yrs) and 74 cognitively normal older adults (M = 68.6 yrs, 58-83 yrs) spoke their thoughts freely during a Think-Aloud Paradigm across two studies. The emotional properties of spoken words and participants’ retrospective self-reported affective experiences were computed and examined for age differences and relationships with psychological well-being. Study 1, conducted before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, revealed that older adults exhibited more diversity of positive, but not negative, unique affectively tinged words compared to young adults, and more positive self-reported thoughts. Despite being conducted virtually during the COVID-19 pandemic, Study 2 replicated many of Study 1’s findings, generalizing results across samples and study contexts. In an aggregated analysis of both samples, positive diversity positively predicted well-being beyond other metrics of affective tone, and the relationship between positive diversity and well-being was not moderated by age. Considering that older adults also exhibited higher well-being, these results hint at the possibility that cognitively healthy older adults’ propensity to experience more diverse positive concepts during natural periods of restful thought may partly underlie age-related differences in well-being and reveal a novel expression of the positivity effect.