Aging and attentional bias for death related and general threat-related information: Less avoidance in older as compared with middle-aged adults

Abstract

Objectives.The aging literature suggests that life satisfaction and affective well being stabilizes or even increases during the aging process, and that death anxiety would decrease with aging. Experimental psychology literature shows that emotions play a critical role in information processing. The aim of the current study was to investigate whether death related versus nondeath-related threat words would lead to differential attentional processing in middle aged versus older adults.Method.Twenty-seven older adults between 74 and 90 year and 31 middle-aged adults between 40 and 50 years participated in the study. We used questionnaires to asses death anxiety and an exogenous cueing task to measure attention toward death related versus general threat words.Results.Our results showed no age-related differences in self-reported death anxiety, but less attentional avoidance of threat in older adults. We failed to demonstrate differences between general and death-related threat.Discussion.This is the first study investigating attentional processing of both death- and threat-related information in older versus younger adults. Less avoidance from threat suggests that with aging, death becomes less of a concern, which might be indicative of acceptance of the own finiteness at old age. © 2012 The Author. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America. All rights reserved.