Positive feelings facilitate working memory and complex decision making among older adults

Abstract

The impact of induced mild positive feelings on working memory and complex decision making among older adults (aged 63–85) was examined. Participants completed a computer administered card task in which participants could win money if they chose from “gain” decks and lose money if they chose from “loss” decks. Individuals in the positive-feeling condition chose better than neutral-feeling participants and earned more money overall. Participants in the positive-feeling condition also demonstrated improved working-memory capacity. These effects of positive-feeling induction have implications for affect theory, as well as, potentially, practical implications for people of all ages dealing with complex decisions.

Keywords:

• Positive affect
• Mood
• Decision making
• Aging
• Working memory

Acknowledgments

Support for this paper was provided by a grant from the National Science Foundation to the second author (SES-0339204). The article is based on the first author's master's thesis at the University of Oregon.

It is dedicated to the memory of Alice Isen, a friend and collaborator, who unfortunately passed away the same day that this paper was accepted. She will be missed.

Notes

¹Research also has demonstrated that positive-feeling inductions can impair task performance (Forgas, 1995) and lead to more heuristic styles of information processing (i.e., Bless, Bohner, Schwarz, & Strack, 1990) when the task at hand is less meaningful, engaging, and relevant to participants (see Isen, 2008, for a review). In the present study, we used a task that participants tend to find engaging.

²A follow-up study was also conducted where we attempted to recruit all original participants to return to the lab approximately four months later to complete the cognitive performance measures a second time. Results (n=19, response rate = 41.3%) were consistent with our interpretation that the mild positive-feeling induction increased working-memory capacity. Within this subset of participants, as in the full sample, working-memory scores of the two conditions originally differed in response to the feeling manipulation (means = 9.5 and 11.3, respectively) for this subset in the neutral- and positive-feeling conditions, t(17) = 1.85, p=0.04, one-tailed. In the follow-up study, however, working-memory scores of these same neutral- and positive-feeling participants did not differ significantly (means = 10.7 and 9.8, respectively, t<1, ns). Results for the other three measures did not differ between conditions in the original or follow-up study.

³This effect remains significant with a conservative Bonferroni correction.