Attitudes Toward Aging Increasing Optimism Found with Age

Borges, Marilyn A.; Dutton, Linda

doi:10.1093/geront/16.3.220

Cited by 21 publications

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“…Older adults believe they themselves have many fewer problems in important life domains, such as health, finances, and social contacts. Other studies have replicated this finding (Borges & Dutton, 1976;Bultena & Powers, 1976;Schulz & Fritz, 1988) and have shown, moreover, that at increasing ages the self-protective discrepancy between self-and other-related conceptions broadens (Borges & Dutton, 1976;. Thomas (1981) has explained this apparent paradox in terms of an ' 'expectation gap" in the framework of reference group theory.…”

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confidence: 92%

Perceived problems for self and others: Self-protection by social downgrading throughout adulthood.

Heckhausen¹,

Brim²

1997

Psychology and Aging

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In this study the authors investigated social downgrading as reflected in the difference between perceptions about the self and about "most people my age." A large cross-national probability sample of adults at different age levels throughout adulthood provided ratings of perceived problems expected for the self and for "most other people my age" with regard to 12 domains of life (e.g., health, marriage, and job). Results showed that with regard to all domains, younger, middle-aged, and older adults believed other people's problems to be more serious than their own problems in these domains. Social downgrading was particularly pronounced for those domains for which a given participant experienced problems himself or herself. This self-protection tendency under threat was particularly pronounced in the older adults. The function and adaptive values for social downgrading across adulthood and old age are discussed.

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confidence: 92%

Perceived problems for self and others: Self-protection by social downgrading throughout adulthood.

Heckhausen¹,

Brim²

1997

Psychology and Aging

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“…The research was also made possible by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Leave Fellowship to Susan Butt and a Canadian National Health Research Scientist Award to Morton Beiser. as a constant interplay between success and failure, ending in possible feelings of despair tempered into confidence and integrity through broadened sociocultural identity. More recently, Williams and Loeb (1968) called for positive and normative data to chart the degree of success in aging, and the theme of successful aging can increasingly be found in the work of writers on gerontology (e.g., Birren & Schaie, 1985;Borges & Dutton, 1976;Brubacker & Powers, 1976;Eisdorfer, 1983;Karp & Yoels, 1982;Swensen, 1983). In short, there is a continued need to extend models of aging cross-culturally and to explore the dynamics of successful as well as of unsuccessful aging.…”

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confidence: 99%

Successful aging: A theme for international psychology.

Butt¹,

Beiser²

1987

Psychology and Aging

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Results of a 13-nation international survey on human values and well-being over the adult life span were reported. Four age groups (under 25, 25-34, 35-49, and over 50 years of age) were compared on four indices: satisfaction with job relations, satisfaction with human relations, satisfaction with material needs, and religiosity. The research involved Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, India, Italy, Japan, Korea, the Philippines, Singapore, the United Kingdom, the United States, and West Germany. Persons over 50 years of age obtained high scores on satisfaction with human relations, satisfaction with material needs, and religiosity, whereas those under 25 scored low on these scales. Thirty-five to 49-year-olds scored highest on satisfaction with job relations. With some exceptions, these trends are relatively consistent across nations. We conclude that the oldest group shows most contentment, satisfaction, and stability in response to the questions.

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“…Older adults had thus a less differentiated processing of the traits across the various experimental conditions. Note however, that consistent with a good self-esteem (Orth et al, 2018 ), and a general high level of optimism (Borges & Dutton, 1976 ) or a “positivity effect” in ageing (Tomaszczyk & Fernandes, 2012 , 2013 ), the ratio of “yes” responses for positive traits was high across categories in older adults (close to 70%) and similar to the highest ratio of “yes” responses observed for young adults in the future condition. Conversely, older adults were significantly less likely to endorse negative traits across all memory types compared with young adults.…”

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confidence: 99%

The ERP correlates of self-knowledge in ageing

et al. 2021

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Self-knowledge is a type of personal semantic knowledge that concerns one’s self-image and personal identity. It has most often been operationalized as the summary of one’s personality traits (“I am a stubborn person”). Interestingly, recent studies have revealed that the neural correlates of self-knowledge can be dissociated from those of general semantic and episodic memory in young adults. However, studies of “dedifferentiation” or loss of distinctiveness of neural representations in ageing suggest that the neural correlates of self-knowledge might be less distinct from those of semantic and episodic memory in older adults. We investigated this question in an event-related potential (ERP) study with 28 young and 26 older adults while they categorised personality traits for their self-relevance (self-knowledge conditions), and their relevance to certain groups of people (general semantic condition). Participants then performed a recognition test for previously seen traits (episodic condition). The amplitude of the late positive component (LPC), associated with episodic recollection processes, differentiated the self-knowledge, general semantic, and episodic conditions in young adults, but not in older adults. However, in older adults, participants with higher composite episodic memory scores had more differentiated LPC amplitudes across experimental conditions. Moreover, consistent with the fact that age-related neural dedifferentiation may be material and region specific, in both age groups some differences between memory types were observed for the N400 component, associated with semantic processing. Taken together, these findings suggest that declarative memory subtypes are less distinct in ageing, but that the amount of differentiation varies with episodic memory function.

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Attitudes Toward Aging Increasing Optimism Found with Age

Cited by 21 publications

References 0 publications

Perceived problems for self and others: Self-protection by social downgrading throughout adulthood.

Perceived problems for self and others: Self-protection by social downgrading throughout adulthood.

Successful aging: A theme for international psychology.

The ERP correlates of self-knowledge in ageing

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