Variations in adults' subjective ages in relation to birthday nearness,age awareness,and attitudes toward aging

This research examined the extent to which variations in adults' subjective age identities were related to information provided by proximal age markers, which are specific age-symbolic experiences presumed to channel shifts in age identities. To this end, adults' psychological, physical, and social subjective age identities were examined in relation to the nearness of their birthdays. In the absence of proximal age information, younger and older adults showed distinctive age-related changes in subjective age. On the other hand, older men's and women's social subjective ages as well as older women's psychological subjective age were less youthful the nearer their birthdays. However, younger adults' age identities did not vary with the closeness of their birthdays. Several gender differences in addition to the moderating effects of adults' awareness of their age and their attitudes toward aging were also observed.     

Inconsistency and uncertainty in multi-attribute judgment of human performance

This paper examines the effect of uncertainty and inconsistency on the judgment of human performance. The results indicate that the effect of inconsistency on judgment is not mediated by subjective uncertainty. We find that both the level and the extremity of judgment decrease with uncertainty. These effects are explained, respectively, by uncertainty aversion and by regressiveness. We also find that both the level and the extremity of judgment of human performance increase with inconsistency. These effects are explained by reliance on integration rules in which judgment is based primarily on some aspects of the information, while other aspects are, to some extent, ignored.     

Self and Identity Among Aging Immigrants in The Joy Luck Club

This article uses George Herbert Mead's theory of symbolic interaction to examine self and identity among aging immigrants in Amy Tan's novel The Joy Luck Club (1989). Social scientists have largely bypassed analysis of fictional accounts of the Asian diaspora. My motivation for employing Mead's theory is to extend social scientific analysis to novels on aging and ethnicity. By examining self-narratives in fictional representations of the aging immigrant experience, I assess how identity develops out of particular social conditions and is achieved through social, psychological processes. Despite some limitations, symbolic interaction offers insights into the process whereby the present brings reinterpretation of the past and individuals are compelled to assign meaning to their life histories.     

Happy as an Extraverted Clam? The Role of Personality for Subjective Well-Being

Personality characteristics, especially the traits of extraversion and neuroticism, have been proposed as the primary determinant of subjective well-being (SWB). Meta-analytic evidence presented here suggests that personality is indeed strongly related with SWB, and that only health is more strongly correlated with SWB. In a study of 137 personality traits that have been correlated with SWB, neuroticism was one of the strongest negative correlates of SWB. However, extraversion was not the primary factor associated with increased SWB. Rather, several personality characteristics that focus on the characteristic experience of emotions, on enhancing relationships, and on one's characteristic style of explaining the causes of life events are most intimately tied to SWB.     

Another Side to Caregiving: Negative Reactions to Being Helped

Until recently, caregiving research focused almost exclusively on caregivers of older adults with health problems, and there was little focus on care recipients' perceptions of the care they receive. The present article reviews relevant research on reactions to caregiving assistance. Several recent studies indicate that help in these contexts can be viewed negatively by care recipients. As many as two thirds of physically impaired older adults who receive assistance with daily activities, such as preparing meals, climbing stairs, or dressing, experience negative reactions to some of the help they receive. Negative reactions seem to have important consequences for the care recipient, because they are associated with higher depression concurrently and 1 year later. Because some of the findings are inconsistent with theoretical models of negative responses to help, an alternative framework, based on social-support and social-conflict research, is briefly proposed.     

Reminiscence as Continuity: Comparison of Young and Older Adults

This study empirically investigates key propositions of a continuity theory approach to reminiscence. According to continuity theory, individuals seek familiarity in the face of uncertainty or impending change, which can accompany the aging process. The reminiscence behavior of young (n = 43) and older (n = 47) adults was compared to ascertain whether significant differences would emerge between the two populations concerning how often they reminisce and their use of reminiscence during transitional periods. Also of interest were differences in potential links between the content of reminiscence episodes and postreminiscence affect. Young adults in this sample reminisced significantly more frequently than older adults and were more likely to reminisce during times of change than were older adults. In addition, there was a direct relationship between the content of reminiscence episodes and postreminiscence affect, with older adults reporting greater emotional satisfaction after recalling the past than did younger adults. Findings lend support to continuity theory: Reminiscence occurs throughout the life span and should not be conceptualized as occurring most frequently in old age.     

Coping with a Paraphrenic World in Late Life

This study deals with late paraphrenia from a psychological coping perspective. Analyses of coping behavior in relation to paraphrenic delusions and hallucinations revealed rational choices of coping efforts and generally consistent emotional reactions to the subjectively perceived problem. The majority of the patients did not display evidence of premorbid abnormal personalities or life courses. The creation and sustainment of psychotic thoughts are discussed in relation to lack of correcting social feedback due to social isolation and weakened cognitive source monitoring. The implications of a psychological coping perspective for intervention are indicated.     

A Text of Identity: Frances Brooke and the Rhetoric of the Aging Spinster

Frances Brooke, writing in 1755 in London, England, selected the figure of the aging spinster as her alter ego when she wrote and edited a thirty-seven issue periodical, The Old Maid. Analysis of the periodical and the cultural environment in which Brooke wrote explains her choice of persona in terms of the issues she faced as a woman producing writing to be read largely by male contemporaries. This analysis reveals some of the underlying stereotypes of aging and identity in the period as well as the way these stereotypes could be used by a clever writer.     

The “Blurring” of the Lifecourse: Narrative, Memory and the Question of Authenticity

The view that aging provokes its own form of masquerade raises the question of what lies behind the mask and whether it is possible to outline what an authentic existence in later life might be like. Contemporary trends toward a narrative explanation of identity, exemplified by the growth of narrative therapies, may pose particular difficulties for theorising about aging. These therapies are associated with a submersion of the personal and social past under demands in the here and now and the de-contextualisation of old age from the lifecourse as it has been lived. Memory and lifecourse context are examined as possible foundations for authenticity and a model is suggested that contains postmodern preoccupations with multiple identity choices, the personal past and the possibilities for expression made available by particular social spaces or contexts.     

“A Tiger Behind, and Coming up Fast”: Governmentality and the Politics of Population Control in China

China has a growing superaging population, known colloquially as a tiger behind. This phenomenon has been traditionally analyzed by conventional social science methodology as a question of resource allocation to a burgeoning elderly population. However, population policies in China have emerged as key vehicles used to legitimize and position the identities that older people adopt. They contain specific yet continually changing technologies that function to mediate relations between older people and the Chinese state. They also represent an increase in state control that can be exerted on lifestyles in family form and older age and thus, the wider social meanings associated with that part of society and lifecourse. This article briefly summarizes the empirical detail and context of superaging in China, presenting an original theoretical analysis based on a reading of the work of Michel Foucault. The interrelationship between the Chinese government and older people is identified in terms of Foucault's (1978) and Rose and Miller's (1992) concept of governmentality. The article highlights how and why older people are the subjects of the Chinese state's gaze.