Showing papers by "Reed W. Larson published in 1986"

Daily well-being of older adults with friends and family.

Abstract: Family members are the major source of physical and emotional support for older adults, yet researchers suggest that friendships have a stronger bearing on subjective well-being. In this research we sought an explanation for this inconsistency in older adults' immediate experiences with friends. Retired adults provided self-reports on their subjective states at random moments during a typical week. Analyses of these reports confirmed the prediction that older adults have more favorable experiences with their friends than with family members. The difference is partly attributable to the greater frequency of active leisure activities with friends, but is also due to unique qualities of interactions with friends that facilitate transcendence of mundane daily realities. We propose that friends provide an immediate situation of openness, reciprocity, and positive feedback that engenders enjoyment and subjectively meaningful exchanges. I have done a lot of thinking about friendship, and over and over again in the course of my reflections it has seemed to me that the most important questions arising in connection with it is this: do men desire friendship because of their own feebleness and inadequacy, with the idea that by exchanging mutual services they may be able to give and to receive things that would be beyond their individual and separate powers? Or is this only a result of friendship, and there should be some other reason for it, something deeper and finer, and lying closer to man's very nature? Cicero, On Friendship (VIII, p.58) One of the major puzzles found in the gerontology literature

The experience of leisure in adolescence

Abstract: This article investigates the psychological dimensions of leisure for adolescents, examining their experience of freedom, intrinsic motivation and positive affect in free time versus productive and maintenance activities. In addition, it examines the degree of challenge and concentration in such activities in order to consider the preparation they provide for serious adult roles. Following the procedures of the experience sampling method, 75 adolescents provided 4,489 self-reports on various dimensions of experience during their daily lives. As expected, in free time activities the adolescents reported experiencing greater freedom, intrinsic motivation and positive affect than in productive and maintenance activities, while they reported higher degrees of challenge and concentration in productive rather than free time activities. However, several free time activities, specifically, sports and games and arts and hobbies, were higher on concentration and challenge than all other activities. Contrasted with the more “relaxed leisure” of activities such as socializing and television watching, these more structured activities are seen as “transitional” in being similar in their demand characteristics to the serious activities of adult roles.