abstract:In psychology and cognitive science, the positivity effect is the tendency of people, when evaluating the causes of the behaviors of a person they like or prefer, to attribute the person's inherent disposition as the cause of their positive behaviors and the situations surrounding them as the cause of their negative behaviors. The positivity effect is the inverse of the negativity effect, which is found when people evaluate the causes of the behaviors of a person they dislike.
In 2003 she coined the term "the positivityeffect, " a phenomenon that describes how people focus more on positive than negative information in old age.
Garber's involvement inspired Carstensen's graduate student Corinna Lockenhoff to see if, in light of the positivityeffect, there was a way to help older people make better decisions about health care.