Retirement is a normative life transition that liberates the individual from the external obligations of employment, being a catalyzer of leisure activity engagement. However, the individual's ...motivations to engage in leisure activities in the time that is gained after retirement may depend on their future self-views (i.e., views of their own ageing) as well as on their levels of preparation for age-related changes. In this study, therefore, we aim to examine longitudinal changes in levels of engagement in leisure activities that occur around the age of retirement as being influenced by views on ageing and preparation for old age. The sample consisted of 451 persons aged 50–65 years at baseline who participated in the Ageing as Future study at two time points 5 years apart. Participants were split in three age-matched groups: recently retired (in between baseline and follow-up), already retired (at baseline), and individuals who were still working (at follow-up). Findings indicated that changes in levels of leisure differed between groups. Compared to both already retired and still working participants, recently retired participants increased their levels of engagement in leisure activities. Positive views on ageing in the leisure domain (at baseline) predicted subsequent increases in activity levels but group and levels of preparation qualified this effect. A combination of positive views on ageing and preparation for age-related changes is needed for one to make use of the time that is gained with retirement, highlighting their role as determinants of behavior in response to normative life events in later life.
In this study, we investigated endorsement of two types of prescriptive views of aging, namely active aging (e.g., prescriptions for older adults to stay fit and healthy and to maintain an active and ...productive lifestyle) and altruistic disengagement (e.g., prescriptions for older adults to behave altruistically toward the younger generation by granting young people access to positions and resources). The study comprised a large international sample of middle-aged and older adults (
= 2,900), covering the age range from 40 to 90 years. Participants rated their personal endorsement of prescriptive views of active aging and altruistic disengagement targeting older adults in general (i.e., "In my personal opinion, older adults should…"). Findings showed that endorsement was higher for prescriptions for active aging than for prescriptions for altruistic disengagement. Age groups in the sample differed regarding their endorsement of both prescriptive views of active aging and altruistic disengagement with older adults showing higher endorsement than middle-aged adults did. Prescriptive views of active aging and altruistic disengagement related positively to each other and to the superordinate social belief that older adults should not become a burden, which attests to their functional similarity. In contrast, prescriptive views of active aging and altruistic disengagement were associated with psychological adjustment in opposite ways, with endorsement of active aging (vs. altruistic disengagement) being related to better (vs. worse) adjustment outcomes such as life satisfaction and subjective health. Our findings highlight the internalization of prescriptive views of aging in older people and their implications for their development and well-being.
This study aimed to examine the underlying mechanism behind the association of age and intellectual curiosity. Previous studies generally showed a negative association between age and intellectual ...curiosity. To shed light on this association, we hypothesize that older adults become more selective in where they invest their curiosity compared with younger adults. The present study (
N
= 857) first examined the association between age and intellectual curiosity and then the mediation roles of future time perspective and perceived importance of curiosity in the association. The moderation effect of culture was also included to test the generalizability of this model across European Americans, Chinese Americans, and Hong Kong Chinese. The findings suggested that there was a significant negative association between age and intellectual curiosity, even after controlling for sex, culture, and education level. The moderated serial multiple mediation model demonstrated that the indirect effect of age on curiosity through future time perspective and importance of curiosity was significant across all three cultural groups while age did not have a direct effect on intellectual curiosity. This finding suggested that, as future time becomes more limited with age, curiosity is less valued; hence, curiosity is negatively associated with the advance of age. This study illustrates the importance of future time and perceived importance of curiosity in explaining age-related differences in curiosity and sheds light on the situations in which older adults may be as intellectually curious as younger adults.
Previous research has shown that American culture places a premium on excitement, enthusiasm, and other high-arousal positive states (HAP) compared with various East Asian cultures. In two studies, ...we tested the prediction that valuing HAP would be associated with less positive personal views of old age (i.e., fewer things people looked forward to and more things they dreaded about old age) in samples of European American, Chinese American, and Hong Kong Chinese younger, middle-aged, and older adults. In Study 1 (N = 849), participants rated how much they ideally wanted to feel HAP during a typical week and described their personal views of old age. As predicted, European American middle and older adults valued HAP more than did their Chinese American and Hong Kong Chinese peers, and these differences in ideal HAP were related to less positive personal views of old age. In Study 2 (N = 164), we experimentally manipulated how much individuals valued HAP and then assessed their personal views of old age: Across cultures, participants in the "value HAP" condition had less positive personal views of old age than did those in the control condition. These effects did not emerge for societal views of old age (i.e., what people associated with "someone" old vs. young). Together, these findings suggest that people's personal views of their own old age are due, in part, to how much excitement they ideally want to feel.
Abstract
Objectives
This study aims at contrasting the effects of limited future time perspective and mortality salience on goal prioritization across adulthood. Socioemotional selectivity theory ...(SST) argues that people increasingly prioritize emotionally meaningful goals when they perceive future time as more limited. Terror management theory (TMT) suggests that mortality salience (i.e., the awareness of one’s mortality) drives people to prioritize the goal of perpetuating own existence through affirming cultural worldview.
Method
In this study, participants (N = 438) were randomly assigned to six conditions that primed (a) limited future time, (b) mortality salience, (c) death reflection, (d) both limited future time and mortality salience, (e) both limited future time, and death reflection, or (f) none.
Results
Results showed that older adults allocated significantly more resources to emotionally close recipients who supported their cultural worldviews in conditions involving future time limitation and death reflection. They also allocated less resources to emotionally not close recipients who did not support their cultural worldviews in conditions involving future time limitation. Younger adults did not show these differences. Nor did mortality salience have any effect.
Discussion
These results suggest that future time perspective and death reflection shift age-related goals more than mortality salience.
Abstract
With global aging, it is crucial to understand how older adults and the process of aging are viewed by members of society. These attitudes can often influence how older adults are treated. ...Since the Journal of Gerontology was founded, we have gained increasing insights into attitudes toward aging, with several notable research developments, including clearer conceptualization of different types of aging attitudes (e.g., life-domain-specific attitudes and self-perceptions of aging), a wider variety of measurements, better understanding of how different social determinants shape aging attitudes, and more sophisticated investigations of cultural variance and invariance in aging attitudes. In this article, we highlight these major shifts in the field of aging attitudes in the past 75 years, discuss the contributions of these developments, and point to potential future directions.
This research examined the role of interdependent self-construal in affecting emotional complexity (concurrence of positive and negative emotions) under intergroup contexts. We hypothesized that ...individuals with interdependent self-construal, who tend to define themselves based on their connection with different groups, would be more emotionally affected by group-related events and thus experience less complex group-based emotions. Study 1 found that when facing an intergroup insulting event, Chinese participants reported less complex group-based emotions compared to American participants, and the cultural difference was mediated by interdependent self-construal. Using a within-subject design, Study 2 confirmed that the negative association between interdependent self-construal and group-based emotional complexity was evident only in the threatening intergroup contexts, but not in positive contexts. Implications of these findings for cross-cultural research and intergroup processes are discussed.
•During intergroup conflicts, Chinese feel less complex emotions than Americans.•Interdependent self-construal decreases emotional complexity in group conflicts.•Interdependent individuals perceive stronger self-relevance to intergroup events.
Abstract
Objectives
This study investigated (a) whether the age-related enhancement in processing positive relative to negative emotional information happened at the early and/or late processing ...stages and (b) if the age-related positivity effect was modulated by cultural relevance using event-related brain potential (ERP).
Methods
Seventeen younger and 19 older Chinese adults judged the emotional valence of Chinese and Western pictures while electroencephalogram (EEG) was recorded and analyzed by temporospatial principal component analysis to dissociate the processing stages.
Results
(a) Larger N100 for negative than positive pictures was observed in younger, but not older adults, while older but not younger adults showed larger late anterior P300 for positive than negative pictures. (b) Older adults showed larger early posterior P300 for positive than negative Western pictures, but not culturally relevant Chinese pictures; such modulation effect by cultural relevance was absent in younger adults.
Discussion
These findings suggest an age-related decrease in sensitivity to negative information in the earlier stage and an age-related increase in sensitivity to positive information in the later stage of cognitive processing. This supports a dual-route model of the age-related positivity effect. Moreover, the age-related positivity effect is more evident for stimuli with less cultural relevance.
This study tested whether time perspective, a central tenant of socioemotional selectivity theory (Carstensen, 2006), moderates positivity effects in emotional memory. To provide measures of time ...perspective, young (YA; M = 22.48 years), young-old (YO; M = 67.56 years), old-old adults (OO; M = 80.24 years), and participants with moderate severity Alzheimer's disease (PAD; M = 84.28 years) completed a line task and reported subjective age. As expected, YA, YO, and OO reported successively more constrained future time perspectives. PAD showed distortion in time perspective, envisioning a future comparable with the YO, although closer matched in chronological age to OO adults. To evince positivity effects, participants were oriented to pairs of emotional images and were then tested for memory (recall and recognition) of the images. Recall and recognition memory for the images indicated an age-related advantage for positive over negative material (positivity effects). Time perspective, however, did not moderate these age effects. In memory performance, PAD were more comparable with OO adults with whom they shared a similar chronological age, rather than YO adults, who had a corresponding time perspective. These results suggest that age correlates that are shared by PAD and OO, such as reduced processing resources, rather than time perspective, may drive the age associated positivity effects.
We investigated whether worrying about COVID-19 predict people's engagement in aging preparation. Furthermore, we expected that this association would have culture- (i.e., Hong Kong, Germany) and ...domain-specific (i.e., finances, housing, care needs, connectedness, end-of-life) tendencies, as the culture and domains that are most severely hit by the pandemic differ.
A total of 360 and 1,294 adults (aged 18 to 98 years) living in Hong Kong and Germany, respectively, participated in a web-based study. We fitted our data to a multilevel model in order to take into account the interdependence of domains (i.e., Level 1) within the same individual (i.e., Level 2).
The results revealed that reporting higher COVID-19 worries was associated with pandemic-induced aging preparation, and this association was particularly apparent for Germans in comparison to those from Hong Kong. When domains were specified, this cultural difference appeared significantly stronger for the domains of care, connectedness, and end-of-life than finances and housing.
Findings imply that worrying about the COVID-19 pandemic predicts people to engage in aging preparation particularly in the culture and domains most affected by the pandemic. These results from those worried about the virus may be attributed to the increased self-relevance to the topic and hence motivation.
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