Laura Carstensen

And then gradually that not only diminishes, but heightened attention to positive emerges.

There is a stereotype of older people that they live in the past and think largely about the past.

There's also a literature in clinical psychology showing that when people think about the past, they're more likely to be depressed.

So that kind of pattern was long believed to capture the obvious depression we would see in older people.

But of course, they're not depressed.

And here's the finding.

They also don't think about the past any more than younger people do.

but they don't think about the future as much as younger people do.

So younger people are rarely in a present focus mode.

They're almost always thinking about the future.

Older people can actually be in the present.

And that tends to be very good for mental health.

There are lots of meditations now, Buddhist meditations that are intended to

help people get to that present focus because living in the moment tends to take people's attention to positive aspects of the world.

Isn't that exciting?

Yes, it does.

Sarah Barber, a psychologist who works also with Mara Mather, ran a study about five years ago where they induced endings, mortality.

You're approaching the end of your life.

They did this kind of imagery induction with younger people and then presented them with stimuli, positive, negative, and neutral.

And younger people also showed this shift and a favoring, a preference for positive information.