Perhaps the most intuitive explanation for this effect is that it is related to some sort of age-related decline in neural processes that detect and encode negative information.
However, her research indicates that this is not the case; her findings suggest that older adults’ positivity effect is the result of strategic processes that help maintain well-being.
Mather first outlined an arousal-biased competition (ABC) model that they argue can account for a disparate array of emotional memory effects, including some effects that initially appear contradictory (e.g., emotion-induced retrograde amnesia vs. emotion-induced retrograde enhancement).
Previous theories fail to account for the broad array of selective emotional memory effects in the literature, and so the ABC model fills a key theoretical hole in the field of emotional memory.
[7] Mather's research projects have included work on how older adults interpret positive stimuli[8] as well as how stress influences older adults' decision making processes[9] and the differences between men and women's decision-making processes under stress.