The Social Realities of Aging

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The Social Realities of Aging
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Video Activity 1
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• My heart leaps up when I behold
• A rainbow in the sky
• So was it when my life
  began
• So is it now I am a man
• So be it when I shall grow
  old,
• Or let me die!
• The Child is father of the
  Man
• I could wish my days to be
  Bound each to each by
  natural piety.
• William
  Wordsworth, 1802.

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Video 42 Up

• Show me the boy at age 7, and I will show you
  the man.
• Is the child the father of the man?
• Agree or disagree? Why?
• Influences on development? Types?
• Hand in Activity Sheet
• Make sure you write your name

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Milestones and Tasks of Adulthood?

• Adolescence and Young Adulthood
• 12-20 years
• 20-40 years
• Middle Adulthood
• 40-65 years
• Late Adulthood
• 65 yrs

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Life-Span development

• lifelong process
• both increases and decreases, and gains and
  losses, in behaviour
• Is modifiable or reversible plasticity
• Multidimensional, multidirectional, multicausal
• Multiple cultural, social, historical contexts

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Domains of Adult Development

• Physical, cognitive, personality, social
• Physical
• Concepts of aging
• Structural and functional change over time
• Reserve capacity over-engineered

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• Cognitive
• Declines in some domains
• Memory, timing
• Gains in others
• Wisdom, expertise, post-formal thinking

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• Personality
• Intimacy, generativity, integration
• Social
• Tasks of development?
• Successful Aging
• Increased period of health and activity in later
  years (thriving)
• Decreased period of decline and disability

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Social Realities of Aging

• Demography of Aging
• World Trends
• Modernization
• Globalization
• increased influence of events, trends happening
  elsewhere

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Increased aging population

• Number countries with more than 2 million elderly
  (65)
• 1991 27
• 2020 49 (projected)
• Projection 1985-2025
• Greatest expansion of elderly in developing
  countries
• Canada 135 increase

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Population Pyramid

• Approaching rectangular shape in Canada
• Subpopulations differ
• E.g. Nunavut

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• Income
• Drops (retirement)
• Females lt Males
• Occupation
• Significant percentage over 65 years continue
  working

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Faster growth in aging population in Canada than
U.S.

• Immigration (adults)
• Increased life expectancy
• Declining birthrate
• 1960 31.4 births/1,000 persons
• 1994 13.4 births/1,000 persons

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• Proportion of elderly in Canada
• (1992) 12 percent
• (2000) 13 percent (15 in Manitoba)
• Challenges?
• Assisted living
• Ageism

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Ageism

• Stereotyped attitudes toward elderly by younger
  groups
• Limits to human opportunity
• Interacts with other sources of stereotyping
• gender
• ethnicity
• SES

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Myths/Misconceptionsabout Aging

• poor health
• low income
• loneliness
• limited occupations
• poor housing

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Institutional Challenges

• curriculum materials
• coursework in professional programs
• TV, popular culture, advertising

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Professional attitudes

• Research interest/bias
• Clinicians preferences
• Homogenization
• Infantalization

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Elder Abuse/Neglect

• physical
• psychological
• financial

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Ideas and Issues

• Influences on Development
• Lifespan development
• Domains of development
• Changing demographics
• Challenges
• Need for more information about development in
  adulthood

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Research in Adult Development
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Goals of Research

• Description (age-related change)
• Prediction (correlations)
• Understanding (causes of change)
• Control
• Therapy
• Guidance

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Research process

• 1. Theory/observation generates hypothesis
• 2. Hypothesis operationalized
• 3. Method designed, results collected
• 4. Hypothesis confirmed or rejected
• 5. Confidence in theory is increased or decreased
  (modified theory)

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Challenges of Studying Adults

• No captive audience
• Sampling problems (external validity
  Generalizability)
• Cohort effects
• Selective attrition
• Tools to assess behaviour
• Age-appropriate?

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Validity

• Construct
• Measure reflects what is true about the target
  characteristic
• IQ test norms dont always cover entire life span
• Internal (causality)
• Necessary conditions
• Correlation between traits
• Time-ordering (cause before effect)
• No alternative explanations (experimental control)

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Reliability

• Consistency of results
• If study repeated on same individuals, expect
  similar results
• Test-retest
• Inter-observer (if more than one judge of
  behaviour)

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Data Collection

• Observation
• Naturalistic (real world, no control, reactivity)
• Laboratory (control, artificial)

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• Self-Reports
• Surveys, questionnaires
• Easy, quick, but
• Social desirability, demand characteristics
• Case Study, Archival
• Rich information
• Retrospective, limited generalizability

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Research Designs

• Correlation
• Relationships between traits
• prediction
• Experimentation
• Internal validity random allocation to
  treatment/placebo
• causality

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Developmental Designs

• Test for effects
• Age
• Cohort
• History

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• Longitudinal
• Developmental change
• Age effects
• Time, expense
• Confounds
• Selective attrition
• History (events between testing periods)

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• Cross-sectional
• Developmental differences (between age groups)
• Age effects
• Inexpensive, quick
• Potential confounds
• Cohort effects

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Sequential Designs

• Check on confounds
• Selection (cohort)
• History (events/changes between test times)
• Testing (practice)

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Time of Testing
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Age Effects Longitudinal
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Age Effects Cross-Sectional
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Cohort Effects
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History Effects
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Theory
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Theoretical Approaches

• Mechanistic
• Organismic
• Contextual
• Nature-Nurture interactions
• Stage/continuous
• Many paths/universal

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World Views

• Mechanistic
• Nurture environment, life circumstances
• Continuous
• Individual many paths, all experience is unique

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• Organismic
• Nature
• Stage
• Universal

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• Contextual
• Nature and nurture interact
• Development as product of biology, environment,
  historic influences
• Stage and continuous
• Universal and individual

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Domains of Development

• Personality/Social
• Mechanistic trait
• McCrea Costa Big Five personality traits
• Organismic
• Erikson psychodynamic
• Levinson stages of life
• Life transitions
• Contextual
• Bronfenbrenner Ecological Systems theory

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• Cognitive
• Mechanistic
• Learning, social learning theory
• Information processing
• Organismic
• Piaget Cognitive developmental
• Contextual
• Vygotsky social cognitive
• Bronfenbrenner ecological systems

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Personality Development
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Contextual approach

• Bronfenbrenners Ecological Systems Theory
• Biological, cognitive, emotional, social elements
  intertwined
• Reciprocal interactions of influence on
  development
• Microsystem face-to-face dyads, institutions
• Mesosystem interactions between microsystems

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• Exosystem committees, institutions
• No direct contact with individual
• Community child-care support for lone parent
  (effects?)
• Macrosystem cultural beliefs, values
• Social class
• Blueprint for other levels

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Personality Development
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Personality

• Essence of person
• Unique identity
• Distinctive patterns of behaviour, thought,
  emotions in adapting to situations

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• Inferred from behaviour
• Structure of mind, emotions
• Adaptation situations, events
• Generalizations about self
• Self schema, locus of control
• Stable/changeable?

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Personality Development

• Maintaining stable concept of self
• Consistent with age-related transpositions
  required by social demands and individuals
  expectations
• Erik Erikson

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Origins of Personality

• Inheritence
• Experience

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• Temperament
• Innate dispositions
• Inherited ability to adapt (easygoing, resistant,
  slow to warm up, etc.)
• Genetic component (shyness, leadership)

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Environmental Influences

• Twin studies significant variation due to
  differences in experience
• Interacts with temperament (disposition
  reinforced by parents responses)

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Models of Adult Personality

• Stability or Change?
• Stage
• Organismic
• Universal sequence of development
• Individuals show predictable change

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• Trait
• Mechanistic
• Focus on attributes, temperament
• Reduce personality to basic elements
• Individual shows stability

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• Timing of Events
• Contextual
• Change not age-related
• Depends on circumstances and events in the
  individuals life

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Stage Models

• Normative personality change
• Common to everyone
• Recognize individual variation, but
• Successive periods
• Marked by crises, transitions, or life
  tasks
• Occur at about the same age for all

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Erikson

• Development through the life span
• Balance positive and negative tendencies
• Eight critical stages (crises)
• Successful resolution results in emergence of a
  virtue
• Four stages in adolescence to adulthood
  (identity, intimacy, generativity, integrity)

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• Identity/Identity Confusion (stage 5)
• adolescence
• develop concept of self
• integrate past with future direction
• Intimacy vs Isolation (stage 6)
• 20s 30s
• tolerant acceptance of others
• develop cooperative, affiliative relationships

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• Generativity vs. Stagnation (stage 7)
• 40 65
• personal concern about others
• outward focus, mentoring
• productivity, contributing

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• Integrity vs. Despair (stage 8)
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• reflect positive qualities from earlier stages
  (trust, autonomy, industry, identity)
• integrate past experience with current realities,
  produce wisdom
• self-acceptance

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Criticisms of Stage Theories

• Overemphasis on chronological age
• Masks individual variability
• No clear markers to denote start or finish of a
  stage
• Deviations from norm may mistakenly be seen as
  maladjustment
• Downplay sociohistorical context

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Criticisms

• Meaning of time and age confused
• Multiple meanings of age
• Functional
• Biological
• Psychological
• Social
• Increased desynchrony between time and aspects of
  age over life span
• Chronological age poorer predictor later in life

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• Western orientation
• Distinctions between individualist and
  collectivist ignored