Changes in positive and negative affect as predictors of change in felt age: Results from the Health and Retirement Study

The present study aimed to examine how changes in positive and negative affect and their interaction predict changes in felt age in a longitudinal design of two waves drawn from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). Participants (n = 4174) at an average age of 67.97 completed the 2008 and 2012 left behind questionnaire of the HRS. Our results showed that an increase in positive affect and a decrease in negative affect from Wave 1 to Wave 2 predicted an accelerated decrease in felt age. There was an interaction effect showing that for those with an increase in negative affect, a higher change in positive affect predicted reduced odds for accelerated increase in felt age. To conclude, improving favorable change in the combination between positive and negative affect might in turn relate to the individual’s self-perceptions of aging, in the second half of life.     

What’s Wrong with the Online Echo Chamber: A Motivated Reasoning Account

In this ‘age of information’, some worry that we get our news from online ‘echo chambers’, news feeds on our social media accounts that contain information from like-minded sources. Filtering our information in this way seems prima facie problematic from an epistemic perspective. I vindicate this intuition by offering an explanation of what is wrong with online echo chambers that appeals to a particular kind of motivated reasoning, or bias due to one’s interests. This sort of bias affects, not which evidence one is exposed to, but how one makes use of the evidence that one has, on the basis of one’s interests. I argue that consulting an online echo chamber often facilitates and amplifies this bias. I then draw some general conclusions about the potential downside of having ready access to so much information.