The "positivity effect" (PE) reflects an age-related increase in the preference for positive over negative information in attention and memory. The present experiment investigated whether Chinese and UK participants produce a similar PE. In one experiment, we presented pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral pictures simultaneously and participants decided which picture they liked or disliked on a third of trials, respectively. We recorded participants' eye movements during this task and compared time looking at, and memory for, pictures. The results suggest that older but not younger adults from both China and UK participant groups showed a preference to focus on and remember pleasant pictures, providing evidence of a PE in both cultures. Bayes Factor analysis supported these observations. These findings are consistent with the view that older people preferentially focus on positive emotional information, and that this effect is observed cross-culturally.
Keywords: Ageing and emotion bias; Eastern versus Western cultures; eye tracking methods.