Aging and Older Adulthood
CHAP 1 AGING AND ADAPTATION
WHAT IS AGE?
• A SYNONYM OF INFIRMITY AND FRAILTY?
• A NUMBER?
• A PATTERN?
• A RISK FACTOR?
• WHEN WE SAY SOMEONE IS AGING, WHAT
EXACTLY DOES THAT IMPLY?
• WHEN SOMEONE SAYS, “I FEEL OLD’ WE
ASSUME PERSON IS FATIQUED & DISPIRITED.
• Many who experience of aging belies that image,
people who continue to thrive , without or in
spite of illness & disability.
▪Take no. 65. It’s a number commonly associated
with slowing down, retirement, fewer
responsibilities & increased susceptibility to
disease.
▪But doesn’t accurately reflect real diversity of
the elderly in terms of health & mental status.
▪Word Age has many meanings than how many
years one has been alive (chronological age).
▪It designates estimates of person’s physical
condition (physical age)
▪Abilities in dealing with environment
(psychological age)
▪Roles one has taken on (social age) or functional
age
▪The elderly are no longer sidelined sliver of
society, but its mainstream.
▪During the next 2 generations, no. of world’s
people older than 60 will quadruple, rising from
606 million now to 2 billion in 2050.
▪The elderly become much more visible
component of our national scene.
▪For the first time in human history, the elderly
will outnumber children. More & more not the
children who are our future, it’s the seniors – The
graying of the globe is the “most significant
population shift in history”
▪Daily, 3,000 people turn 65, & only 2,000 above
that age die, leaving 1,000 new members of the
elderly population.
▪In the 30 years between 1990 and 2020, over 65
American population will grow by 71%, more
than twice rate of growth in general population
▪Malaysia’s population ageing rapidly.
▪Proportion of older persons aged 60 yrs &
above in M’sia would reach 11.5% (or 3.6 million)
by yr 2020 (United Nations)
▪This means 1.4 million older persons today will
more than double in short period of 16 years.
▪This shift in demographics, caused by declining
fertility & mortality rates, will have multifaceted
impact on our society.
▪Today’s elderly are pioneers of new kind of
aging. The next century will be dominated by the
concerns of elderly.
▪Elderly are not burdensome dependents.
▪They are valuable resources with hidden &
untapped potentials for national development
▪Public health measures introduced in this
century – advances in nutrition, hygiene, &
vaccination have redefined old age.
▪100 yrs ago it wasn’t unusual to become sage
grandparent before 40th birthday, or to die soon
afterward.
▪Average life expectancy for men and women in
M’sia has increased now.
Aging and Older Adulthood
▪This means half the people now alive in this
country will live past 75 yrs.
▪AGING AND ADAPTATION & ADJUSTMENT
▪Particular problems of adaptation &
adjustment are associated with aging.
▪Among more stressful experiences are changes
in physical appearance & cognitive abilities,
chronic illness, financial difficulties, loss of status
& roles, isolation thru’ disease or disability, &
deaths of relatives & friends.
▪Physical changes (appearance & perception)
have profound effect on self-concept.
▪In order to compensate for changing body &
new social & occupational roles, older adults
adopt new diets, develop new skills, & find new
ways of using their increased leisure time
▪Readjustment to changing social values &
morals & experiencing loss of status & self-
satisfaction is common.
▪Strong social support is important.
▪Personality – unique organization of abilities,
traits, & behavior patterns characterizing
individual, shows substantial degree of
consistency across life span.
▪Those are well adjusted in youth & middle
adulthood tend to remain so in older adulthood;
▪People who are maladjusted in earlier life
continue to have adjustment problems in old
age.
▪Erikson’s Stages of Psychosocial Development
a. Infancy
b. Adolescence
c. Early Childhood
d. Young Adulthood
e. Play Age
f. Middle Age
g. School Age
h. Old Age
▪Major crisis of middle age as one of
▪Generativity vs Self-absorption –
▪This is time when people take stock of their lives
& accomplishments.
▪They realize personal future is limited
▪Their time perspective begins to shorten.
▪Focus more on no. of yrs left than on those
already lived.
▪Spurred on by awareness that death is
imminent.
▪The major crisis of old age is Integrity vs
Despair,
▪& primary goal is to become integrated & self-
accepting person.
▪How ind handles this crisis depends on
personality C’tics been developing for years, as
well as physical health, economic situation, &
meaningfulness of social roles played
successfully.
▪But no matter how realistic older adults have
been in their attitudes toward life, despair is no
stranger in older adulthood; almost everyone
experiences hopeless feeling at some time.
▪Levinson’s Transition Theories talk about
midlife crisis, taking place either during midlife
transition or age 50 transition.
▪According to Roger Gould (1980), midlife is time
to shed one’s irrational notions about life,
including illusions that
a) I will be safe forever
b) death cannot happen to me or my loved one
c) it’s impossible to live without partner in the
world
d) no change of life exists beyond the family
e) I am an innocent being
▪Significance in Levinson’s theory – late adult
transition (60-65) when person realizes he/she
no longer occupy center stage.
Aging and Older Adulthood
▪Heavy responsibilities of middle adulthood
must be reduced as aging ind learns to function
in changed relationship between him/herself &
society
▪Although self-concept may decline in old age,
decline is related to health problems, decreased
socioeconomic security, & other events
associated with aging.
▪Both stage & transition theories emphasize
changes in personality & ways of adjusting to
environmental changes over time.
▪Self-concept – a person’s self-concept includes
overall personal value placed on him/herself as
personality, as well as self-evaluation of his/her
own body & behavior.
RIGIDITY AND FLEXIBILITY
▪Self-esteem changes with age.
▪Maintenance of high self-esteem & feelings of
achievement in old age is impt bec it increases
resistance to stress & contributes to physical &
mental health (Antonovsky, 1981)
▪How individuals able to maintain stable self-
concept & self-esteem despite declining health
& other difficulties in old age may seem puzzling.
DESTINY CONTROL AND INTERIORITY/INWARDNESS
▪People who feel weak & powerless – c’tics
considered to be earmarks of old age; tend to
resign themselves to poor socioeconomic &
physical condition.
▪Those who feel outlived their options & must
submit blindly to whatever fate has in store for
them become easily depressed or angry.
▪Cautiousness, passivity, & lower self-
confidence are also seen in the tendency of older
men to conform more than younger ones to
group opinions in making judgement or
decisions (Klein, 1972)
▪Increased cautiousness with aging, is greater in
older men with less education , less financially
secure & less self-confident than better
educated, more affluent contemporaries
(Botwinick, 1966)
▪According to Gutmann (1974) and Neugarten
(1968b) - during 60s & 70s of man’s life,
interactions with people & outside world in
general show trend toward simplification or less
active involvement.
▪Gutmann (1977) – increased interiority in old
age occur in most geographical regions, nations,
ethnic groups, & cultures.
▪Common manifestations across cultures is
increased interest in supernatural & religious
devotion (‘magical mastery”) during older
adulthood
▪Presumption older adults are rigid not limited
to teenagers.
▪People all ages view them as less adaptable,
less willing, or less able to change their ways of
doing things, reluctant to try new approaches to
personal & social problems.
▪Butler suggested “cautious” rather than
“inflexible” or “rigid” better characterization of
how older adults approach problems or new
situations.
▪Older adults not great risk takers: less likely to
risk being wrong for the sake of being right or
fast (Botwinick, 1978).
▪But if directions & structure of task are clear,
they try to do their best.
▪Also, older people often reluctant to make
complex decisions in ambiguous situations.
▪Those with higher intelligence & greater self-
confidence are readier to accept reasonable risks
than rigidly to what worked in the past.
▪Less intelligent people or those with organic
brain disorders (Alzheimer’s disease, dementia,
Aging and Older Adulthood
etc) likely to be rigid & unadaptable in
environmental changes.
TIME PERSPECTIVE
▪Older adults seen as living in the past rather
than present or future
▪They don’t concentrate greatly on future: why
should they, when time seems to pass so quickly
& their future is limited?
▪They don’t ignore the future, they simply do not
focus on it anymore than present or past.
▪They may evaluate the past as better than
present, & present better than future (Bortner &
Hultsch, 1972), but unfair to characterize them
as “living in the past”
PERSONALITY TYPES
▪Reichard & colleagues (1962) found 5 types of
adjustment patterns in older men:
a) Mature (constructive)
b) Rocking chair (dependent)
c) Armored (defensive)
d) Angry (hostile)
e) Self-hating
▪These 5 types represent specific mtds of coping
with problems of older adulthood.
STRESS AND COPING
▪Sources of stress in older adulthood – loss of
income, loss of roles & status, loss of spouse
(bereavement), isolation thru’ disability, & loss
of cognitive functioning (Palmore, 1970).
▪Coping mechanism by older person not
identical as younger person.
▪In attempt to cope with stress, older adults less
likely than middle-aged & young adults to use
confrontation or aggression (Folkman & Lazarus,
1987) or fantasy (wishful thinking).
▪Use denial, repression, or other passive
strategies, than rage, highly emotional when
faced with dissapointments & stress.
▪“keeping stiff upper lip” and “not crying on
other people’s shoulders”
▪Mental disorders are more common in older
adults, but their frequency varies with gender,
socioeconomic status, urban versus rural
residence, & other demographic variables.
▪People who suffer from mental disorders in
their youth tend to carry these disorders with
them into older adulthood.
▪Mental disorders associated with organic brain
syndromes (Alzheimer’s disease, dementia),
depression. & delusional disorders are most
common in older adulthood.
▪Psychotic disorders characterized by distortions
of reality also involve disturbances in perception,
language, memory, & mood, less common &
more serious than other functional disorders.