Despite its assumed importance for emotional well-being, studies investigating the
positivity effect (PE) in older adults’ information processing rarely tested its relationship
with immediate or general affective outcome measures like emotional reactivity or
emotional well-being. Moreover, the arousal level of the to-be-processed emotional
stimuli has rarely been taken into account as a moderator for the occurrence of the
PE and its relationship with affective outcomes. Age group differences (young vs.
old) in attention (i.e., fixation durations using eye tracking) and subjective emotional
reactions (i.e., pleasantness ratings) were investigated in response to picture stimuli
systematically varied in valence (positive vs. negative) and arousal (low vs. high). We
examined whether there is a link between age group differences in fixation durations
and affective outcomes (i.e., subjective emotional reactions as well as emotional wellbeing).
Older compared to young adults fixated less on the most emotional part in
negative but not in positive low-arousing pictures. This age difference did not occur
under high arousal. While age group differences in fixation duration did not translate into
age group differences in subjective emotional reactions, we found a positive relationship
between fixation duration on negative low-arousing pictures and emotional well-being,
i.e., negative affect. The present study replicated the well-known PE in attention and
emotional reactivity. In line with the idea that the PE reflects top-down-driven processing
of affective information, age group differences in fixation durations decreased under high
arousal. The present findings are consistent with the idea that age-related changes in the
processing of emotional information support older adults’ general emotional well-being