I am back from a refreshing week off in sunny Florida with my family...it is always good to get a change of scenery.
Despite being technologically unplugged for the week (critical, in my humble experience, to the 'refreshing' part) going to Florida particularly in the golf community in which my family resides always provides me with anecdotal food for thought with regard to elderly individuals and quality of life. I must confess I was initially one who could never imagine becoming a snow bird - retiring part time to Florida. Each time I visit, however, I see more and more precisely *why* this is so popular. While too much sunshine can make me grumpy ;-), it does get folks outside, moving, social and overall - on the go. It made me want to move more.
Dr. Lee recently shared an interesting article by Infurma et al (2010) which talked about an individual's sense of mastery being important with regard to how old we feel. Anecdotally, I can confirm these findings. The individuals in this community are outside and moving, a lot. While this can certainly introduce other potential confounds (such as physical fitness, exposure to light) with regard to impact on mastery and perceived age, it does not surprise me at all that mastery can directly impact sense of age. I feel greater sense of mastery when I work out regularly in my less sunny Washington DC area surroundings, but suspect certain environments truly enhance this effect for distinct populations.
Anyway, it just goes to show that research is never far from the mind...even while on vacation ;-)
AES
Infurma, F.J., Berg, S., & Zarit, S.H. (2010). The nature and cross-domain
correlates of subjective age in the oldest old: Evidence from the OCTO Study.
Psychology and Aging, 25(2), 470-476.
Thanks for the article references, Dr. Sickle.
ReplyDeleteI agree that Florida does seem to attract a lot of snowbirds—elders who come down to Florida from northern states during the winter or sometimes permanently. I lived in Florida for over 15 years, and saw that it was becoming a major migratory destination for the retirement community, with good reason. It gets more and more difficult to shovel snow and deal with the hazards of winter as you get older. (As I'm finding myself, living in the mountains of Northern California.)
I'm delighted to see so many seniors able to be out and active, and staying healthier longer. But I have a concern that it may lead to a false perspective: that all older people should be healthy and active as though they were still young.
As a disabled person, at 54, I have to look at the future from the fact that I'm *not* a young person, and that I *do* have limitations I need to respect and work around. That doesn't imply that I need to hide away from society and disappear; it simply means that I need to treat my body's limitations with respect. What worries me about the picture of the active, go-getter senior lifestyle Dr. Sickle mentions and that is prominent in TV commercials and in the AARP's publications is that it is not realistic for many of us. I don't want to see it become an expectation or a norm that is then used to reject or mistreat those of us who cannot meet it.
We're already seeing a lot of negative political rhetoric that basically presumes the active, go-getter elder norm; that presumes we're all healthy with sufficient retirement incomes to purchase our own health care on the open market. However, that is not the case for many of us; pre-existing conditions will be used to discriminate against us as we've already seen in practice.
So how do we, as psychologists and researchers into the lives of the elderly find a balance between the bright, optimistic stereotype that is developing and the reality that many of us actually face? It is a difficult situation, but one in which we must provide insights based on facts, not simply what we wish to believe.
How do we help people whose health is already impaired achieve that sense of mastery of our fate, as Dr. Sickle describes? What sorts of support systems do we need to create to assist us all to attain a decent standard of living—by which I mean the ability to live and take care of ourselves?
These are all questions I feel are deserving of further research, and some thought.
Michael Starsheen
Hi Michael,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your candid and thoughtful reply. You raise, for me, three critical points – first, that we need to always examine our assumptions both as conductor and consumer if you will, of research.
Second, you raise the age old question (particularly with regard to quantitative research) of how do we contextualize our work or stated differently – to whom can we generalize our findings? The nature of quantitative work is to generalize our findings back to our population. Given this, as researchers it is incumbent upon us to be very clear about who our population is. This necessitates, then, that we know to whom our findings do not apply which in turn indicates a limitation in our research and an area requiring additional study.
Third, as a social psychologist, I greatly appreciate your discussion of stereotypes as variables which can impact our daily functioning, including our functioning as researchers. So for those research studies you see which discuss the elderly in purely stereotypic concerns, this *should* raise questions. We know from decades of stereotype research, that such cognitive processes are well engrained but can indeed be altered and awareness being one critical step in the altering process (Nelson, 2009).
AES
Nelson, T. (Ed.). (2009). Handbook of prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination. New York, NY: Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.