Study 1
In Study 1, we investigated age differences in the ability to
detect the underlying emotional state of others by explicitly discriminating
between enjoyment and nonenjoyment smiles.
Younger and older adults were presented with photographs of
individuals displaying enjoyment smiles, nonenjoyment smiles, or
neutral expressions. Participants were asked to directly identify the
underlying emotional state of the individual (i.e., is the person
feeling happy?) rather than to make a conceptual distinction of
smile veracity (e.g., fake vs. genuine) because the main aim of the
present research was to assess the ability to recognize positive
affect. This task may reveal age differences in happiness perception
because it requires sensitivity to subtle differences in the
emotional meanings of smiles rather than simply discriminating
smiles from other facial expressions (e.g., anger, fear, and sadness).
In addition, according to the SST, there is an age-related
positivity effect when processing emotional stimuli. It has previously
been argued that positivity effects in older adults may
underlie age-related declines in the recognition of negative but not
positive emotional expressions (Williams et al., 2006). Positivity
effects may influence older adults’ detection of positive emotion
such that older adults may have a greater bias toward thinking that
all smiling individuals are experiencing happiness.