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Angry Faces Get Noticed Quickly: Threat Detection is not Impaired Among Older Adults

Department of Psychology, University of California, Santa Cruz.

Address correspondence to Mara Mather, Psychology Department, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064. E-mail: mather{at}ucsc.edu

Previous studies have found that younger adults detect threatening stimuli more quickly than other types of stimuli. This study examined whether older adults also show this adaptive threat-detection advantage. On each trial in the experiment, participants saw an array consisting of nine schematic faces. Eight of the faces were neutral; the ninth was neutral, angry, happy, or sad. Participants indicated whether there was a discrepant face in each array. Both older and younger adults were significantly faster to correctly detect a discrepant face when it signaled threat than when it signaled happiness or sadness. There was no age difference in this threat-detection advantage, indicating that this automatic process is maintained among older adults.