Social and Emotional Aging

doi:10.1146/ANNUREV.PSYCH.093008.100448

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Social and Emotional Aging

Journal Article•DOI•

Social and Emotional Aging

Susan T. Charles¹, Laura L. Carstensen²•Institutions (2)

University of California, Irvine¹, Stanford University²

01 Jan 2010-Annual Review of Psychology (Annual Reviews)-Vol. 61, Iss: 1, pp 383-409

TL;DR: Viewing aging as adaptation sheds light on resilience, well-being, and emotional distress across adulthood.

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Abstract: The past several decades have witnessed unidimensional decline models of aging give way to life-span developmental models that consider how specific processes and strategies facilitate adaptive aging. In part, this shift was provoked by the stark contrast between findings that clearly demonstrate decreased biological, physiological, and cognitive capacity and those suggesting that people are generally satisfied in old age and experience relatively high levels of emotional well-being. In recent years, this supposed "paradox" of aging has been reconciled through careful theoretical analysis and empirical investigation. Viewing aging as adaptation sheds light on resilience, well-being, and emotional distress across adulthood.

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Journal Article•DOI•

Thwarted Belongingness and Perceived Burdensomeness: Construct Validity and Psychometric Properties of the Interpersonal Needs Questionnaire

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Kimberly A. Van Orden¹, Kelly C. Cukrowicz², Tracy K. Witte³, Thomas E. Joiner⁴•Institutions (4)

University of Rochester Medical Center¹, Texas Tech University², Auburn University³, Florida State University⁴

01 Mar 2012-Psychological Assessment

TL;DR: Both constructs demonstrated convergent associations with related interpersonal constructs-including loneliness and social support for belongingness and social worth and death ideation for burdensomeness--as well as prospective associations with suicidal ideation.

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Abstract: The present study examined the psychometric properties and construct validity of scores derived from the Interpersonal Needs Questionnaire (INQ) using latent variable modeling with 5 independent samples varying in age and level of psychopathology. The INQ was derived from the interpersonal theory of suicide and was developed to measure thwarted belongingness and perceived burdensomeness-both proximal causes of desire for suicide. Results support that thwarted belongingness and perceived burdensomeness are distinct but related constructs and that they can be reliably measured. Further, multiple-group analyses were consistent with invariance for young versus older adults and nonclinical versus clinical populations, thereby supporting the relevance of these constructs to diverse populations. Finally, both constructs demonstrated convergent associations with related interpersonal constructs-including loneliness and social support for belongingness and social worth and death ideation for burdensomeness--as well as prospective associations with suicidal ideation.

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954 citations

Cites background from "Social and Emotional Aging"

...A robust literature has linked meaning in life among older adults with both social support (Charles & Carstensen, 2010; Krause, 2007) and loneliness (Golden et al., 2009), thus we proposed convergent relations between thwarted belongingness and meaning in life....
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Journal Article•DOI•

Strength and vulnerability integration: a model of emotional well-being across adulthood.

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Susan T. Charles¹•Institutions (1)

University of California, Irvine¹

01 Nov 2010-Psychological Bulletin

TL;DR: The theoretical model of strength and vulnerability integration (SAVI) is presented to explain factors that influence emotion regulation and emotional well-being across adulthood and to predict trajectories of emotional experience across the adult life span.

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Abstract: The following article presents the theoretical model of strength and vulnerability integration (SAVI) to explain factors that influence emotion regulation and emotional well-being across adulthood. The model posits that trajectories of adult development are marked by age-related enhancement in the use of strategies that serve to avoid or limit exposure to negative stimuli but by age-related vulnerabilities in situations that elicit high levels of sustained emotional arousal. When older adults avoid or reduce exposure to emotional distress, they often respond better than younger adults; when they experience high levels of sustained emotional arousal, however, age-related advantages in emotional well-being are attenuated, and older adults are hypothesized to have greater difficulties returning to homeostasis. SAVI provides a testable model to understand the literature on emotion and aging and to predict trajectories of emotional experience across the adult life span.

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794 citations

Cites background from "Social and Emotional Aging"

...Cross-sectional and longitudinal studies reveal that negative emotional experiences occur less often, and positive experiences occur with similar if not greater frequency across adulthood (see review by Charles & Carstensen, 2007, 2010)....
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Journal Article•DOI•

Meta-analysis of the age-related positivity effect: Age differences in preferences for positive over negative information.

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Andrew E. Reed¹, Larry Chan¹, Joseph A. Mikels²•Institutions (2)

Stanford University¹, DePaul University²

01 Mar 2014-Psychology and Aging

TL;DR: Results indicate that the positivity effect is reliable and moderated by theoretically implicated methodological and sample characteristics, and indicates that older adults show a significant information processing bias toward positive versus negative information, whereas younger adults show the opposite pattern.

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Abstract: In contrast to long-held axioms of old age as a time of “doom and gloom,” mounting evidence indicates an age-related positivity effect in attention and memory. However, several studies report inconsistent findings that raise critical questions about the effect’s reliability, robustness, and potential moderators. To address these questions, we conducted a systematic meta-analysis of 100 empirical studies of the positivity effect (N!7,129). Results indicate that the positivity effect is reliable and moderated by theoretically implicated methodological and sample characteristics. The positivity effect is larger in studies that do not constrain (vs. constrain) cognitive processing—reflecting older adults’ natural information processing preferences—and in studies incorporating wider (vs. narrower) age comparisons. Analyses indicated that older adults show a significant information processing bias toward positive versus negative information, whereas younger adults show the opposite pattern. We discuss implications of these findings for theoretical perspectives on emotion‐cognition interactions across the adult life span and suggest future research directions.

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563 citations

Cites background from "Social and Emotional Aging"

...…cited empirical articles (e.g., Charles et al., 2003; Kensinger et al., 2002; Mather & Carstensen, 2003), early theoretical articles (Carstensen & Mikels, 2005; Mather & Carstensen, 2005), and recent review articles (Charles & Carstensen, 2010; Reed & Carstensen, 2012; Scheibe & Carstensen, 2010)....
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...Yet recent empirical and theoretical work challenges long-held axioms by illustrating the “bright side” of aging, from improved psychological well-being and emotional self-regulation to an age-related positivity effect (for a review see Charles & Carstensen, 2010)....
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Journal Article•DOI•

The theory behind the age-related positivity effect.

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Andrew E. Reed¹, Laura L. Carstensen¹•Institutions (1)

Stanford University¹

27 Sep 2012-Frontiers in Psychology

TL;DR: The operational definition and theoretical foundations of the positivity effect are articulated and the empirical evidence based on studies of visual attention, memory, decision making, and neural activation are reviewed.

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Abstract: The “positivity effect” refers to an age-related trend that favors positive over negative stimuli in cognitive processing. Relative to their younger counterparts, older people attend to and remember more positive than negative information. Since the effect was initially identified and the conceptual basis articulated (Mather & Carstensen, 2005) scores of independent replications and related findings have appeared in the literature. Over the same period, a number of investigations have failed to observe age differences in the cognitive processing of emotional material. When findings are considered in theoretical context, a reliable pattern of evidence emerges that helps to refine conceptual tenets. In this article we articulate the operational definition and theoretical foundations of the positivity effect and review the empirical evidence based on studies of visual attention, memory, decision-making, and neural activation. We conclude with a discussion of future research directions with emphasis on the conditions where a focus on positive information may benefit and/or impair cognitive performance in older people.

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555 citations

Cites background from "Social and Emotional Aging"

...Despite abundant evidence that older people are both relatively more selective (Charles and Carstensen, 2010) and experience a relatively positive balance of emotions in daily life (Carstensen et al., 2011), a causal link between selective exposure and emotional well-being has not been established....
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...Despite abundant evidence that older people are both relatively more selective (Charles and Carstensen, 2010) and experience a relatively positive balance of emotions in daily life (Carstensen et al....
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...Selective exposure is arguably the most effective way to regulate emotional states and there is considerable evidence that older people are more selective than younger people in their choice of social partners and environments (for a review, see Charles and Carstensen, 2010)....
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...A considerable number of empirical studies in the realm of social choice support this contention (for a review, see Charles and Carstensen, 2010)....
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Journal Article•DOI•

Annual Research Review: Positive adjustment to adversity--trajectories of minimal-impact resilience and emergent resilience.

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George A. Bonanno¹, Erica D. Diminich¹•Institutions (1)

Columbia University¹

01 Apr 2013-Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry

TL;DR: Some of the key differences in the conceptualization of resilience following chronic adversity versus resilience following single-incident traumas are considered, and some of the misunderstandings that have developed about these constructs are described.

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Abstract: Bad things can and do happen. As much as we might wish it otherwise, acute and highly aversive events such as natural disaster, serious injury, and the death of loved ones have plagued humans at every stage of the life cycle. While these events are usually intensely distressing for both children and adults, it has become abundantly clear that over the longer term not everyone reacts in the same way (Bonanno, 2004; Bonanno, Westphal, & Mancini, 2011). Indeed, although in common parlance such events are referred to as “traumatic”, in actuality because of the wide range in outcomes they evoke, these events are more appropriately described as “potentially traumatic events” or PTEs (Norris, 1992; Bonanno, 2004). In this paper, we review the growing body of research on resilience to isolated PTEs and the factors that predict it. We begin by considering how resilience to PTEs might be defined, and pay special attention to some of the misunderstandings that have surrounded the construct. In part, we attribute these definitional misunderstandings to the fact that the psychological study of resilience was originally advanced in the literature on chronic adversity in children, and then only later migrated to the adult literature on single-incident trauma. Because single-incident trauma is phenomenologically distinct from chronic adversity, however, the study of resilience in the context of a PTE necessitated a degree of conceptual readjustment (Bonanno, 2004, 2005, 2012; Bonanno & Mancini, 2008; Masten & Narayan, 2012). We review the nuances of these adjustments in some detail and discuss some of the misunderstandings they have generated. To organize our discussion and to extend and integrate previous work on divergent pathways of adjustment (e.g., Bonanno, 2004; Masten & Narayan, 2012), we introduce the terms emergent resilience and minimal-impact resilience to represent trajectories of positive adjustment in the context of chronic adversity and single-incident trauma, respectively. We then describe the some of the recent statistical advances in latent trajectory modeling and briefly review each of the prototypical trajectories identified in response to isolated PTEs. Because emergent resilience has been well studied in the developmental literature, we devote the remainder of the paper to reviewing the relatively new research on minimal-impact resilience and the factors that predict it.

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495 citations

Cites background from "Social and Emotional Aging"

...The positive adjustment seen in older adults has been attributed to their greater life experiences and knowledge gained from previous encounters with stressors (Knight et al., 2000) as well as their increased capacity to regulate negative emotion (Charles & Carstensen, 2010)....
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References

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Journal Article•DOI•

The CES-D Scale: A Self-Report Depression Scale for Research in the General Population

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Lenore Sawyer Radloff¹•Institutions (1)

National Institutes of Health¹

01 Jun 1977-Applied Psychological Measurement

TL;DR: The CES-D scale as discussed by the authors is a short self-report scale designed to measure depressive symptomatology in the general population, which has been used in household interview surveys and in psychiatric settings.

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Abstract: The CES-D scale is a short self-report scale designed to measure depressive symptomatology in the general population. The items of the scale are symptoms associated with depression which have been used in previously validated longer scales. The new scale was tested in household interview surveys and in psychiatric settings. It was found to have very high internal consistency and adequate test- retest repeatability. Validity was established by pat terns of correlations with other self-report measures, by correlations with clinical ratings of depression, and by relationships with other variables which support its construct validity. Reliability, validity, and factor structure were similar across a wide variety of demographic characteristics in the general population samples tested. The scale should be a useful tool for epidemiologic studies of de pression.

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48,339 citations

"Social and Emotional Aging" refers methods in this paper

...For example, commonly used questionnaires query people about emotions experienced across the prior few weeks (Affect Balance Scale: Bradburn 1969; Center for Epidemiological Studies-Depression: Radloff 1977) or the previous month (psychological distress: Kessler et al. 2002)....
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Journal Article•DOI•

The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation.

[...]

Roy F. Baumeister¹, Mark R. Leary•Institutions (1)

Case Western Reserve University¹

01 May 1995-Psychological Bulletin

TL;DR: Existing evidence supports the hypothesis that the need to belong is a powerful, fundamental, and extremely pervasive motivation, and people form social attachments readily under most conditions and resist the dissolution of existing bonds.

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Abstract: A hypothesized need to form and maintain strong, stable interpersonal relationships is evaluated in light of the empirical literature. The need is for frequent, nonaversive interactions within an ongoing relational bond. Consistent with the belongingness hypothesis, people form social attachments readily under most conditions and resist the dissolution of existing bonds. Belongingness appears to have multiple and strong effects on emotional patterns and on cognitive processes. Lack of attachments is linked to a variety of ill effects on health, adjustment, and well-being. Other evidence, such as that concerning satiation, substitution, and behavioral consequences, is likewise consistent with the hypothesized motivation. Several seeming counterexamples turned out not to disconfirm the hypothesis. Existing evidence supports the hypothesis that the need to belong is a powerful, fundamental, and extremely pervasive motivation.

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17,492 citations

"Social and Emotional Aging" refers background in this paper

...All rights reserved 0066-4308/09/0110-0383$20.00 383 A nn ANRV398-PS61-15 ARI 28 October 2009 11:51...
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...They have pondered why the “bad is stronger than good” (Baumeister & Leary 1995)....
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...At no point in life does the need to feel embedded in a larger social group lessen (Baumeister & Leary 1995, Charles & Mavandadi 2003, Maslow 1943, Snowden 2001), nor do the devastating consequences of isolation diminish (Berkman et al. 2000, Mellor et al. 2008)....
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...Yet once people appraise information, findings suggest that younger adults are more likely to dwell on this negative information than are older adults (Charles & Carstensen 2008)....
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Journal Article•DOI•

Stress, social support, and the buffering hypothesis.

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Sheldon Cohen¹, Thomas Ashby Wills•Institutions (1)

Carnegie Mellon University¹

01 Sep 1985-Psychological Bulletin

TL;DR: There is evidence consistent with both main effect and main effect models for social support, but each represents a different process through which social support may affect well-being.

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Abstract: Examines whether the positive association between social support and well-being is attributable more to an overall beneficial effect of support (main- or direct-effect model) or to a process of support protecting persons from potentially adverse effects of stressful events (buffering model). The review of studies is organized according to (1) whether a measure assesses support structure (the existence of relationships) or function (the extent to which one's interpersonal relationships provide particular resources) and (2) the degree of specificity (vs globality) of the scale. Special attention is given to methodological characteristics that are requisite for a fair comparison of the models. It is concluded that there is evidence consistent with both models. Evidence for the buffering model is found when the social support measure assesses the perceived availability of interpersonal resources that are responsive to the needs elicited by stressful events. Evidence for a main effect model is found when the support measure assesses a person's degree of integration in a large social network. Both conceptualizations of social support are correct in some respects, but each represents a different process through which social support may affect well-being. Implications for theories of social support processes and for the design of preventive interventions are discussed.

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14,570 citations

"Social and Emotional Aging" refers background in this paper

...In addition, people with strong social networks report greater emotional well-being in day-to-day life as well as when they experience stressful life events (see classic review by Cohen & Wills 1985)....
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...Both structural—i.e., the number and type of social partners in a given network— and functional—i.e., the perceived or actual receipt of support—aspects of social networks contribute to emotional well-being (Cohen & Wills 1985)....
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Book•

Emotion and Adaptation

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Richard S. Lazarus

01 Jan 1991

TL;DR: In this article, the authors discuss the person-environment relationship: motivation and coping Cognition and emotion Issues of causality, goal incongruent (negative) emotions Goal congruent (positive) and problematic emotions.

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Abstract: Part I: BACKGROUND: About emotion Issues of research, classification and measurements Part II: THE COGNITIVE-MOTIVATIONAL-RELATIONAL THEORY: The person-environment relationship: motivation and coping Cognition and emotion Issues of causality Part III: INDIVIDUAL EMOTIONS: Goal incongruent (negative) emotions Goal congruent (positive) and problematic emotions Part IV: EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT: Individual development Social influence Part V: PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS: Emotions and health Implications for research, assessment, treatment and disease prevention References Index.

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8,565 citations

"Social and Emotional Aging" refers background in this paper

...Whether a person perceives a situation as a challenge or a threat predicts associated emotional distress (Lazarus 1991)....
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Journal Article•DOI•

Social relationships and health.

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James S. House¹, Karl R. Landis, Debra Umberson²•Institutions (2)

University of Michigan¹, University of Texas at Austin²

29 Jul 1988-Science

TL;DR: Experimental and quasi-experimental studies suggest that social isolation is a major risk factor for mortality from widely varying causes and the mechanisms through which social relationships affect health remain to be explored.

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Abstract: Recent scientific work has established both a theoretical basis and strong empirical evidence for a causal impact of social relationships on health. Prospective studies, which control for baseline health status, consistently show increased risk of death among persons with a low quantity, and sometimes low quality, of social relationships. Experimental and quasi-experimental studies of humans and animals also suggest that social isolation is a major risk factor for mortality from widely varying causes. The mechanisms through which social relationships affect health and the factors that promote or inhibit the development and maintenance of social relationships remain to be explored.

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7,669 citations

"Social and Emotional Aging" refers background in this paper

...In addition to better cognitive functioning, people who report stronger social networks are at lower risk for morbidity and mortality (see review by Berkman et al. 2000, House et al. 1988, Ryff & Singer 2001)....
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...At no point in life does the need to feel embedded in a larger social group lessen (Baumeister & Leary 1995, Charles & Mavandadi 2003, Maslow 1943, Snowden 2001), nor do the devastating consequences of isolation diminish (Berkman et al. 2000, Mellor et al. 2008)....
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