Senior citizens might be happier than their younger counterparts

Newswise — Are senior citizens indeed happier than their children and grandchildren? A recent study indicates that they might be.

According to research funded by the National Institute on Aging by Dr. Stacey Wood, a neuropsychologist and associate professor at Scripps College in Claremont, California, there is evidence that older adults process negative information differently than their younger counterparts.

In a recent experiment with collaborator Dr. Michael Kisley at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, both older and younger adults were shown a series of negative images (such as dead animals) or positive images (such as bowls of ice cream), and the degree to which brain activity increased was recorded. Simply put, older adults are more likely to be less responsive to negative or unpleasant information.

Wood says, “As a group, older adults are less likely to be depressed and less affected by negative or unpleasant information. In general, humans have a tendency to pay more attention to ‘bad’ than to ‘good,’ a phenomenon called the negativity bias. For example, people tend to remember negative events or images more easily than neutral or even positive events. In decision making, people weigh losses twice as heavily as gains.

For instance, when making choices between rounds of gambling, a loss of $100 is weighed twice as heavily as a gain of $100, a phenomenon known as loss aversion. Overall, it seems that humans are hard-wired to pay more attention to negative information. This tendency decreases as we age.”

In addition to commenting on the overall psychology of aging, Dr. Wood can also address:
• Capacity assessments in the elderly and guardianship issues;
• Other ways our brains change at specific ages and stages;
• How emotional processing affects our moods and attitudes;
• Why Medicare Part D is sometimes difficult for seniors to comprehend;
• Some negative results of this increased happiness, such as elder fraud.

Wood and Kisley’s research also involved the effects of gambling losses on younger and older adults. They found that older adults are less likely to pay attention to negative results. Wood says, “Younger adults learn very early to stay clear of the decks with high losses. Older adults are able to tolerate the losses and are more willing to risk future draws in hopes of a high payout. Indeed, older adults tend to do as well as younger adults by the end of the game.”

Currently an associate professor of psychology at Scripps College in Claremont, Calif., Dr. Wood is an expert on a number of issues related to aging and the brain, including dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, decision-making, and maintaining autonomy. She has published extensively in peer-reviewed medical and psychological journals. Her work on decision-making is funded by a grant from the National Institute on Aging (R15 A021442-01). She holds a Ph.D. in clinical neuropsychology from the University of Houston.