 Instead, older Japanese were shown to assign a greater value to positive aspects of otherwise negative experiences than younger Japanese, whereas no such effect has been observed in the U.S.

Studies have found that older adults are more likely than younger adults to pay attention to positive than negative stimuli (as assessed by the dot-probe paradigm and eye-tracking methods).However, the effect also differs across cultures.For example, Hong Kong Chinese looked away from happy stimuli and more towards fearful stimuli, and the difference in attention pattern was related to differences in self-construal.