Spiritual Development Across the Adult Life Course: Findings from a Longitudinal Study

Longitudinal data spanning early (30s) and older (late 60s/mid-70s) adulthood were used to study spiritual development across the adult life course in a sample of men and women belonging to a younger (born 1928/29) and an older (born 1920/21) age cohort. All participants, irrespective of gender and cohort, increased significantly in spirituality between late middle (mid-50s/early 60s) and older adulthood. Members of the younger cohort increased in spirituality throughout the adult life cycle. In the second half of adulthood, women increased more rapidly in spirituality than men. Spiritual involvement in older age was predicted by religious involvement and personality characteristics in early adulthood and subsequent experiences of negative life events.     

Stability and change in religiousness during emerging adulthood

Understanding the development of religiousness is an important endeavor because religiousness has been shown to be related to positive outcomes. The current study examined mean-level, rank-order, and individual-level change in females' religiousness during emerging adulthood. Genetic and environmental influences on religiousness and its change and stability were also investigated. Analyses were completed with an epidemiological study of 2 cohorts of twins: 1 assessed at ages 14 and 18 and a 2nd at 20 and 25. Mean levels of religiousness decreased significantly with age, while rank-order stability was high. Individual-level change was also evident. Analyses also supported the hypotheses that more change would occur in the younger cohort compared with the older cohort and that more change would occur in religious service attendance than the general index of religiousness. Twin analyses suggested that the heritability of religiousness increased with age, while the shared environmental influences decreased. For the younger cohort, change was genetic in origin, while stability was environmental. In the older cohort, change was influenced by nonshared environment and stability by both genes and family environment.     

Not your parents' test scores: cohort reduces psychometric aging effects

Increases over birth cohorts in psychometric abilities may impact effects of aging. Data from 2 cohorts of the Long Beach Longitudinal Study, matched on age but tested 16 years apart, were modeled over ages 55-87 to test the hypothesis that the more fluid abilities of reasoning, list and text recall, and space would show larger cohort differences than vocabulary. This hypothesis was confirmed. At age 74, average performance estimates for people from the more recently born cohort were equivalent to those of people from the older cohort when they were up to 15 years younger. This finding suggests that older adults may perform like much younger ones from the previous generation on fluid measures, indicating higher levels of abilities than expected. This result could have major implications for the expected productivity of an aging workforce as well as for the quality of life of future generations. However, cohort improvements did not mitigate age declines.     

Stability of personality self-ratings over 30 years: evidence for an age/cohort interaction

An investigation was made of the hypothesis of Bloom (1964) and others that the stability of personality is greater among older than younger adults. The subjects were 459 men in two cohorts, followed from 1947 to 1977 as part of a longitudinal medical study. Self-ratings were obtained over the 30-year period on 15 item-factor scales from the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory and on two higher order factors. There was no selective attrition in the sample with respect to baseline personality scores. Thirty-year uncorrected stability coefficients ranged from .08 to .88 across the two cohorts. There was substantial evidence of greater stability on many traits in the older than in the younger age/cohort group. Furthermore, in late adulthood, traits related to the higher order factor Constraint were more stable than were traits related to Positive vs. Negative Affectivity. The study is not a definitive test of Bloom's hypothesis because cohort and age effects are confounded. However, the results are supportive of the hypothesis and the study improves on existing research in a number of ways.     

Cohort Differences in Personal Goals and Life Satisfaction in Young Adulthood: Evidence for Historical Shifts in Developmental Tasks

This study investigated the influence of changing socio-historical conditions on personal goals in young adulthood. It was hypothesized that socio-historical changes related to individualization have resulted in shifts in goal pursuit. Participants from three birth cohorts reconstructed their important goals when they were 20 years old. Members of the oldest cohort were born between 1920 and 1925. Members of the middle cohort were born between 1945 and 1950. Members of the youngest cohort were born between 1970 and 1975. Goal content, the degree to which goals were perceived as being shared by members of the same cohort (social sharedness), perceived control over goal attainment, success in attainment, and life satisfaction at age 25 were measured in a retrospective study. Results show consistent shifts over time. Whereas members of older cohorts mentioned goals related to classical developmental tasks, members of younger cohorts mentioned more individualistic, self-related goals and goals related to education. The processes through which goal pursuit influenced life satisfaction also changed. Perceived social sharedness of goals was a direct predictor of life satisfaction for the oldest cohort. For the younger cohorts, perceived control over goal attainment influenced success which in turn influenced life satisfaction. These changes support the contention that developmental tasks and processes are historically variant.     

Suicide among older people: projections for the future

Guided by recent demographic analyses of birth cohort effects, the authors demonstrate the relationship between cohort size and longitudinal suicide rates, with reference to four particular cohorts which have entered adulthood at various periods throughout the present century. Combining this perspective with a look at projected population increases among older age groups, estimates are made of the scope of the problem of suicide among older people which is likely to be encountered during the early decades of the next century.     

Men’s and Women’s Change and Individual Differences in Change in Femininity from Age 33 to 85: Results from the Intergenerational Studies

This investigation illustrates men’s and women’s change in femininity, and individual differences in change in femininity from early (age 33 or 35) to late (age 78 or 85) adulthood. Members of three long-term longitudinal samples (total N = 327) provided California Psychological Inventory (CPI) Femininity scale scores, collected a maximum of five times. Application of longitudinal hierarchical linear modeling indicates: (1) both men and women show significant variability in initial level and change in femininity, (2) gender predicts both individuals’ initial level and change in femininity—the average man, initially low in femininity, becomes significantly higher in femininity across the lifespan; the average woman, initially high in femininity, becomes significantly lower in femininity across the lifespan, (3) change in femininity is unconnected to marital or parental status, and (4) change in femininity is connected to psychological health level for women only—more psychologically healthy women show a decline in femininity, while less healthy women increase their femininity level. Overall, results support Jung’s androgyny hypothesis of a cross-over of gender roles in men and women, but do not support Gutmann’s hypothesis that such cross-over is tied to “parental emergency.” Additional exploration of the data indicates Gough and Bradley’s (1996) CPI-derived personality types also predict femininity initial level for women and femininity change for men.     

The End of the Solidly Democratic South: The Impressionable‐Years Hypothesis

The partisan realignment of the White South, which transformed this region from being solidly Democratic to being the base of the Republican Party, has been the focus of much scholarship. Exactly how it occurred is unclear. Widespread individual‐level attitude changes would be contrary to the well‐known within‐person stability of party identification. However, according to the impressionable‐years hypothesis, events that occur during adolescence and early adulthood may have a lasting impact on later political attitudes. This would suggest that cohort replacement may be driving partisan realignment. We test this possibility using data from the American National Election Studies from 1960 to 2008. Consistent with the impressionable‐years hypothesis, Southern Whites from the pre‐Civil Rights cohort (born before 1936) maintained their Democratic Party identification longer than their younger counterparts. However, all cohorts in the South have changed their partisan attitudes at comparable rates over time, contrary to the impressionable‐years hypothesis. These data suggest that the partisan realignment of the South was driven by both cohort replacement and within‐cohort attitude change. More targeted case studies of older cohorts living through the civil rights era, and of younger cohorts in the post‐Reagan era, yield results generally consistent with the impressionable‐years hypothesis. More generally, our findings suggest that very large scale events are required to disrupt the normal continuity of party identification across the life span.     

Aging and social satisfaction: offsetting positive and negative effects

Social satisfaction in late adulthood originates from competing sources. Older adults tend to be more positive and less negative than younger adults, but social contact and working memory often decrease with age, both of which might limit older adults' social functioning. In the current study of younger and older adults, these socially facilitative vs. socially debilitative changes were found to underlie stasis in social satisfaction. These findings show that the lack of an overall effect for age can mask competing changes in social functioning in late adulthood, as the sources of social satisfaction might change even if the outcome does not.     

Temporal references in dreams and autobiographical memory

In an attempt to determine whether temporal references identified in dreams follow the same temporal distributions as those documented for autobiographical memories, 28 younger women (18-35 years of age) and 30 older women (60-77 years of age) kept a home dream diary for 1 week and then slept 1 night in the laboratory for rapid eye movement sleep dream collection. The following morning, they identified temporal references in their dreams and produced a sample of autobiographical memories using the semantic cuing method. For both groups, there was a linear decrease in temporal references identified in dreams and autobiographical memories with increased remoteness for the last 30 years. As predicted, for the older group, there were similar cubic trends reflecting a disproportionately higher number of both temporal references identified in dreams and autobiographical memories from adolescence/early adulthood compared with adulthood and childhood. The results support the notion of continuity between waking and dreaming memory processes.     

Religiosity and Aging: Age and Cohort Effects and Their Implications for the Future of Religious Values in High‐Income OECD Countries

It has long been noticed that older people tend to be more religious than younger people. However, it is still disputable whether this fact should be attributed to people generally becoming more religious with age per se (age effect), or to the process of secularization, wherein earlier cohorts (to which the now older people belong) used to be more religious than those that appeared later, younger cohorts (cohort effect). We try to distinguish between these two effects using a multifactor model applied to World Values Survey data (1981–2014) and find that at least in the developed countries the age effect strongly prevails over the cohort effect. This finding has important implications, e.g., that population aging in OECD countries can possibly slow down the transition from religious to secular values. This effect is already visible in some countries, such as Japan.     

Personality traits in old age: measurement and rank-order stability and some mean-level change

Lothian Birth Cohorts, 1936 and 1921 were used to study the longitudinal comparability of Five-Factor Model (McCrae & John, 1992) personality traits from ages 69 to 72 years and from ages 81 to 87 years, and cross-cohort comparability between ages 69 and 81 years. Personality was measured using the 50-item International Personality Item Pool (Goldberg, 1999). Satisfactory measurement invariance was established across time and cohorts. High rank-order stability was observed in both cohorts. Almost no mean-level change was observed in the younger cohort, whereas Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Intellect declined significantly in the older cohort. The older cohort scored higher on Agreeableness and Conscientiousness. In these cohorts, individual differences in personality traits continued to be stable even in very old age, mean-level changes accelerated.     

Novelty seeking in adulthood: increases accompany decline

Using stereotypes, researchers have predicted that novelty seeking declines in adulthood. Through this cross-sectional study, the authors revealed that only the external sensational type of novelty seeking declined, whereas the internal sensational and internal and external cognitive types remained stable or increased. A population of 233 adults (152 men, 81 women) completed the Novelty Experiencing Scale (P. H. Pearson, 1970). Correlational analyses revealed that older men sought novelty more frequently through cognition than did younger men and that older women were less likely than were younger women to seek novelty through their senses. Multivariate analysis of variance, 2 x 5 (Gender x Age), showed that cognitive novelty seeking increased significantly among participants younger than 50 years of age. Sensational novelty seeking was lower among women older than 40 years and among men older than 50 years. The analyses revealed no significant Gender x Age interactions.     

Invariance of cognitive triage in the development of recall in adulthood

Past research has demonstrated that cognitive triage (weak-strong-weak recall pattern) is a robust effect that optimises children's recall. The aim of the current research was to determine whether adults’ free recall also exhibits triage and whether cognitive triage is less marked with older than younger adults’ recall. Younger and older adults memorised 16 unrelated words until all items were recalled perfectly. The triage pattern existed for both the younger and older adults’ recall and there was evidence for age differences in triage. Our results are consistent with claims of greater verbatim forgetting and increased susceptibility to output interference with age in adulthood. Further research is needed to determine whether fuzzy-trace theory adequately explains the ageing of triage and what factors play a role in the development of this pattern of recall in adulthood.     

Retrospective recall of sexual orientation identity development among gay, lesbian, and bisexual adults

Although recent attention has focused on the likelihood that contemporary sexual minority youth (i.e., gay, lesbian, bisexual [GLB]) are "coming out" at younger ages, few studies have examined whether early sexual orientation identity development is also present in older GLB cohorts. We analyzed retrospective data on the timing of sexual orientation milestones in a sample of sexual minorities drawn from the California Quality of Life Surveys. Latent profile analysis of 1,260 GLB adults, ages 18-84 years, identified 3 trajectories of development: early (n = 951; milestones spanning ages 12-20), middle (n = 239; milestones spanning ages 18-31), and late (n = 70; milestones spanning ages 32-43). Motivated by previous research on variability in adolescent developmental trajectories, we identified 2 subgroups in post hoc analyses of the early profile group: child onset (n = 284; milestones spanning ages 8-18) and teen onset (n = 667; milestones spanning ages 14-22). Nearly all patterns of development were identity centered, with average age of self-identification as GLB preceding average age of first same-sex sexual activity. Overall, younger participants and the majority of older participants were classified to the early profile, suggesting that early development is common regardless of age cohort. The additional gender differences observed in the onset and pace of sexual orientation identity development warrant future research.     

Exploring collaborative problem solving in adulthood

Collaborative problem solving occurs in situations in which two or more individuals cooperate in appraising, representing, and solving a variety of cognitive tasks. Collaborative groups are the context for much everyday cognitive activity in adulthood. Collaboration has been explored as a means through which older adults may maintain high levels of performance, perhaps compensating for individual-level cognitive and neurological decline. This study explored the effects of collaboration (group size) and adult age on solving both fixed- and unrestricted-alternatives 20 Questions tasks. Younger (M=24.3 years) and older (M=67.9 years) adults were randomly assigned to one of three homogeneous group size conditions: individuals, dyads, and tetrads. Results indicated some dissociation between individual-level performance (poorer for older adults) and collaborative performance (better for older adults). For the fixed-alternatives task, older adults produced more of the relatively inefficient hypothesis-scanning questions than did younger adults. In contrast, older collaborative groups produced more of the efficient constraint-seeking questions than hhpothesis-scanning questions, and an amount equivalent to that of younger adults. Overall performance for the difficult unrestricted-alternatives task was less efficient for both younger and older adults. The roles of task type, group characteristics, and adult age are discussed.     

Patterns of mean-level change in personality traits across the life course: a meta-analysis of longitudinal studies

The present study used meta-analytic techniques (number of samples = 92) to determine the patterns of mean-level change in personality traits across the life course. Results showed that people increase in measures of social dominance (a facet of extraversion), conscientiousness, and emotional stability, especially in young adulthood (age 20 to 40). In contrast, people increase on measures of social vitality (a 2nd facet of extraversion) and openness in adolescence but then decrease in both of these domains in old age. Agreeableness changed only in old age. Of the 6 trait categories, 4 demonstrated significant change in middle and old age. Gender and attrition had minimal effects on change, whereas longer studies and studies based on younger cohorts showed greater change.     

Reward speeds up and increases consistency of visual selective attention: a lifespan comparison

Children and older adults often show less favorable reward-based learning and decision making, relative to younger adults. It is unknown, however, whether reward-based processes that influence relatively early perceptual and attentional processes show similar lifespan differences. In this study, we investigated whether stimulus–reward associations affect selective visual attention differently across the human lifespan. Children, adolescents, younger adults, and older adults performed a visual search task in which the target colors were associated with either high or low monetary rewards. We discovered that high reward value speeded up response times across all four age groups, indicating that reward modulates attentional selection across the lifespan. This speed-up in response time was largest in younger adults, relative to the other three age groups. Furthermore, only younger adults benefited from high reward value in increasing response consistency (i.e., reduction of trial-by-trial reaction time variability). Our findings suggest that reward-based modulations of relatively early and implicit perceptual and attentional processes are operative across the lifespan, and the effects appear to be greater in adulthood. The age-specific effect of reward on reducing intraindividual response variability in younger adults likely reflects mechanisms underlying the development and aging of reward processing, such as lifespan age differences in the efficacy of dopaminergic modulation. Overall, the present results indicate that reward shapes visual perception across different age groups by biasing attention to motivationally salient events.     

"They" are old but "I" feel younger: age-group dissociation as a self-protective strategy in old age

Age becomes an important self-defining aspect particularly during advanced age. With increasing age, negative attributes related to age and aging become salient. Aging-related declines, losses, as well as the finitude of life seem to threaten older adults' sense of self. We hypothesize that older adults will try to avoid the negative consequences of their age group membership by distancing themselves from their age group. Study 1 (N = 544, 65% women; 18-85 years of age) examined the role of age-group identification for self-conception and self-image (subjective age and future time perspective) across the life span. Results show that weakly identified older adults feel younger than their chronological age and report a more expanded future time perspective relative to their same-age counterparts. A second experiment (N = 68, 69% women; 65-85 years of age) tested the impact of age stereotypes on older adults' level of age-group identification. Results suggest that older adults are more likely to psychologically dissociate themselves from their age group when negative age stereotypes are salient. Discussion focuses on (mal)adaptive consequences of age-group dissociation in later adulthood.