Prior studies on value development across adulthood have generally shown that as people age, they espouse communal values more strongly and agentic values less strongly. Two studies investigated ...whether these age differences in personal values might differ according to cultural values. Study 1 examined whether these age differences in personal values, and their associations with subjective well-being, showed the same pattern across countries that differed in individualism-collectivism. Study 2 compared age differences in personal values in the Canadian culture that emphasized agentic values more and the Chinese culture that emphasized communal values more. Personal and cultural values of each individual were directly measured, and their congruence were calculated and compared across age and cultures. Findings revealed that across cultures, older people had lower endorsement of agentic personal values and higher endorsement of communal personal values than did younger people. These age differences, and their associations with subjective well-being, were generally not influenced by cultural values.
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.
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.
Older adults report greater affective well-being in solitude than younger adults, but prior findings are based on correlational designs. We aim to examine age differences in affective well-being in ...solitude using an experimental design and to examine conflict de-escalation as a potential mechanism. In Study 1, 207 participants were randomly assigned to either a solitude or a social interaction condition. In Study 2, 128 participants were randomly assigned to one of four conditions: solitude-escalation, solitude-de-escalation, interaction-escalation, and interaction de-escalation. After a 15-min solitude or social interaction period, they reported their affective experiences. In Study 1, older (vs. younger) adults reported more positive affect overall. This age-related difference was greater in the solitude (vs. social interaction) condition; older adults reported less negative affect than younger adults in the solitude, but not the social interaction, condition. In Study 2, older (vs. younger) participants reported more high-arousal positive affect in the solitude-escalation condition. This difference was not significant in conflict de-escalation conditions. Our studies provide causal evidence of the relationship between solitude and affective well-being and advance our understanding of motivations that explain why older adults maintain better affective well-being in solitude.
Objective: To examine the effects of using cognitive reappraisal to find positive gains on caregivers' depressive symptoms, burden, and psychological well-being. Method: Ninety-six caregivers of ...persons with Alzheimer's disease were randomly assigned to receive a benefit-finding intervention or 1 of 2 treatment-as-usual conditions, namely, simplified psychoeducation (lectures only; SIM-PE) or standard psychoeducation (STD-PE). Each participant received 4 biweekly interventions of 3 hr each, over a 2-month period, at home. Results: Results showed that benefit-finding participants reported lower depressive symptoms after treatment, when compared with either SIM-PE (d = −0.46) or STD-PE (d = −0.50) participants. They also reported less role overload when compared with STD-PE participants (d = −0.46). Self-efficacy in controlling upsetting thoughts was a mediator for some of the treatment effects. Conclusion: Finding positive gains is an effective intervention to reduce depressive symptoms among Alzheimer caregivers.
What is the public health significance of this article?
In view of the rising dementia pandemic, more effective ways to support family caregivers are needed. Using an innovative benefit-finding intervention, we demonstrated that the use of cognitive reappraisal to help caregivers find positive meanings could reduce depressive symptoms and feelings of overload significantly. Importantly, this intervention can be delivered by psychology assistants with proper training, thus largely enhancing the availability of psychological methods to address the needs of dementia caregivers.
Prior studies have found mixed results regarding whether there are cultural differences in the age-related positivity effect, defined as older adults' showing a greater bias in cognitive processing ...for positively over negatively and neutrally valenced information relative to younger adults. This study attempted to address this controversy by examining visual attention toward culturally relevant versus irrelevant pictures that differed in valence among younger and older U.S. Americans and Hong Kong Chinese. Preferences (attentional biases toward particular valence) and effectiveness (whether the attentional biases are associated with better mood) were also distinguished. Findings revealed that regardless of cultural relevance of the pictures, older U.S. Americans showed more gaze preference for positive over negative pictures compared to their younger counterparts; this age difference was not found among Hong Kong Chinese. In contrast, older Hong Kong Chinese showed better mood as a function of more gaze preference for positive over negative pictures. Younger Hong Kong Chinese and younger and older U.S. Americans did not show this association. The results suggest that an age-related positivity effect exists at the preference level for U.S. Americans but at the effectiveness level for Chinese.
Selective Engagement in Preparations for Aging Hess, Thomas M; Park, Jeongsoo; de Paula Couto, M Clara P ...
The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences,
2024-Feb-01, 2024-02-01, 20240201, Volume:
79, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Preparing for old age is an adaptive behavior with positive consequences on well-being. This study examined; (a) the degree to which the importance associated with positive outcomes within specific ...domains of everyday functioning (e.g., social relationships, health) varies across ages and cultures; (b) the impact of importance on preparing for old age; and (c) whether the effects of importance were greater in later life.
Using data from adults aged 30-85 years in Germany (n = 623), Hong Kong (n = 317), and the United States (n = 313) collected over 5 years, we examined variations in importance ratings across age, cultures, and behavioral domains, and the extent to which age and importance predicted preparations.
Importance ratings were found to vary with age, time of test, domains, and culture, reflecting the expected contextual effects. Importance also was a positive predictor of preparations, with the strength of prediction being somewhat greater in old age.
The results provide evidence that the perceived importance of functioning within domains is affected by a number of contextual factors, including the domain of everyday function and culture. Given that importance also predicts preparations, such variation may help explain differences in preparations across contexts. In line with selective engagement theory, some support was also obtained for the prediction that older adults are more selective in engaging resources in support of preparations. Such selectivity can be viewed as an adaptive response to diminishing personal resources in later life.
This study aimed to examine the therapeutic mechanism of the benefit-finding therapeutic (BFT) intervention that used cognitive reappraisal and alternative thinking to construct positive aspects of ...caregiving (PAC), in a cluster-randomized controlled trial for Alzheimer caregivers. Forty two caregivers received BFT, whereas 87 received psychoeducation as control. Depressive symptoms and global burden were outcomes measured at baseline, postintervention, and 4- and 10-month follow-up. Mediators considered included PAC (measured by benefit word count to a qualitative measure) and three self-efficacies-controlling upsetting thoughts (SE-CUT), responding to disruptive behaviors, and obtaining respite. Using mixed-effects regression, we demonstrated that benefit-finding increased caregivers' PAC and SE-CUT, but that only SE-CUT uniquely predicted depressive symptoms and global burden longitudinally. Path analyses with bootstrapped confidence intervals, using full information maximum likelihood estimation to retain the whole sample with partial missing data, showed that SE-CUT change from baseline to postintervention mediated intervention effects on depressive symptoms, but not global burden, at both follow-ups. No mediation effects were found for PAC and the other self-efficacies. The BFT effect on depressive symptoms was partly accounted for by improvement in SE-CUT. The therapeutic mechanism for the effect on burden remained unknown. The study sheds light on the importance of actively promoting positive caregiver functioning.
Preparation for age-related changes is a central task in midlife and older age and a determinant of functioning and well-being in later life. If and how people prepare is influenced by societal and ...institutional circumstances and also by beliefs about aging and the future.
We assessed domain-specific preparation for age-related changes in samples from three countries with high population aging but different premises regarding preparation, and analyzed data from N = 1,830 individuals aged 35-85 years from urban regions in Germany, the United States, as well as China (Hong Kong).
Preparation was universally low in China, but the amount of differences between countries varied depending on life domain. While we found pronounced differences between all three countries for domains related to public provision (such as health care, work, and finances), East-West differences in preparation emerged for domains regarding social relations and end-of-life concerns. The concreteness of time perspective and future self-views mediated country differences in preparation.
Our results speak for the culture-specificity of preparing for old age and we deliver evidence on psychological variables that might explain these differences.
Abstract
Objectives
Past studies showed that intergenerational contact is beneficial in improving attitudes toward older people. To date, however, research on the benefits of contact with older ...adults focused on younger adults (intergenerational contact), overlooking the effects for older adults (contact with same-age peers). In this study, we investigated the association between contact with older adults and views of the self in old age in a domain-specific way among younger and older adults.
Methods
The sample (n = 2,356) comprised younger (39–55 years) and older (65–90 years) adults who participated in the aging as future study and were from China (Hong Kong and Taiwan), the Czech Republic, Germany, and the United States. We used moderated mediation models for data analysis.
Results
Contact with older adults was related to more positive views of the self in old age and this effect was mediated by more positive stereotypes of older people. These relations were stronger for older adults. Beneficial effects of contact with older adults emerged mostly in the domains of friends and leisure, but less in the family domain.
Discussion
Having interactions with other older adults may help favorably shape how younger adults and particularly older adults view their own aging, especially in relation to friends and leisure activities. From the perspective of older adults, having regular contacts with other older adults may increase the heterogeneity of exposure to different aging experiences, thus encouraging the formation of more differentiated stereotypes of older people and of their views of themselves in old age.
PDF
