Washington: Ever wonder why we tend to become more positive as we grow older? And why are adolescents so sensitive to negative social cues? As part of a recent study, researchers have found that sensitivity to anger cues improves dramatically during early to mid-adolescence and decreases as people age.
For the study, researchers created a digital test of emotion sensitivity that was completed by nearly 10,000 men and women, ranging in age from 10 to 85. The test allowed researchers to measure how much each person was able to detect subtle differences in facial cues of fear, anger, and happiness.
The test also identified how people in different age groups displayed changes in their sensitivity to those facial emotions. Findings of the study were published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Rutter, the study’s lead author, explained that participants were tested using the web-based platform
TestMyBrain.org.
They were shown images of faces, presented in pairs, and were asked “Which face is more angry?,” “Which face is more happy?,” or “Which face is more fearful?”
Rutter stated that the online platform helped the researchers tap into a “much larger and more diverse sample set” than previous studies. Germine, the study’s senior author, said that the new testing method and the large sample size helped the researchers gain a deeper understanding into differences in emotion processing.
“From studies and anecdotal evidence, we know that the everyday experiences of an adolescent is different from a middle aged or older person, but we wanted to understand how these experiences might be linked with differences in basic emotion understanding,” said Germine.
Rutter added that “the paper grew out of knowing that these differences existed and wanting to compare these differences across the emotion categories.” Through their study, the researchers also drilled down on the way emotion sensitivity develops during adolescence.
“We found that sensitivity to anger cues improves dramatically during early to mid-adolescence,” said Rutter. On the other end of the life span, the study showed that sensitivity to facial cues for fear and anger decrease as people age, but the ability to detect happiness cues stays the same.
“It’s well established that there is an age-related decline in the ability to decode emotion cues, in general, but here we see very little decline in the ability to detect differences in happiness,” Germine said.
