PubMed Health⌕ Search

Biomedical subjects

L L Carstensen

Publications and source records attributed to L L Carstensen.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1998

Influence of HIV status and age on cognitive representations of others.

In 2 studies the postulate that the perception of time left in life influences the ways that people conceptualize social relationships was explored. It was hypothesized that when time is limited, emotional aspects of relationships are highly salient. In Study 1, a card-sort paradigm involving similarity judgments demonstrated, for a sample of persons 18 to 88 years old, that the prominence of affect in the mental representations of prospective social partners is positively associated with age. In Study 2, the same experimental approach was applied to a sample of young gay men similar to one another in age, but notably different in their health status (that is, HIV negative; HIV positive, asymptomatic; and HIV positive, symptomatic). It was found that, with age held constant, increasing closeness to the end of life is also associated with an increasing prominence of affect in the mental representations of social partners. The results suggest that the perception of limited time, rather than chronological age, is the critical variable influencing mental representations of social partners.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1998

Perspectives on socioemotional selectivity in late life: how personality and social context do (and do not) make a difference.

This research extends earlier cross-sectional findings suggesting that although social network sizes were smaller in very old age as compared to old age, the number of emotionally close relationships in the network did not distinguish age groups. In a representative sample of community dwelling and institutionalized adults, aged 70 to 104 years, we explored whether such indication of socioemotional selectivity was related to personality characteristics and family status. Extraversion, Openness to Experience, and Neuroticism as assessed by the NEO-PI were related to overall network size but unrelated to the average emotional closeness of social partners in the network (i.e., our indicator of socioemotional selectivity). Family status, in contrast, was related to average emotional closeness to network members. Moreover, family status moderates the relationship between average emotional closeness to network members and feelings of social embeddedness. Findings suggest a stronger influence of contextual rather than personality factors on social functioning in late life.

Affect↗
PubMed1997

Emotion and aging: experience, expression, and control.

Age differences in emotional experience, expression, and control were investigated in 4 studies. A community sample of 127 African Americans and European Americans (ages 19-96 years) was used in Study 1; a community sample of 82 Chinese Americans and European Americans (ages 20-85 years) was used in Study 2; a community sample of 49 Norwegians drawn from 2 age groups (ages 20-35 years and 70+ years) was used in Study 3; and a sample of 1,080 American nuns (ages 24-101 years) was used in Study 4. Across studies, a consistent pattern of age differences emerged. Compared with younger participants, older participants reported fewer negative emotional experiences and greater emotional control. Findings regarding emotional expressivity were less consistent, but when there were age differences, older participants reported lesser expressivity. Results are interpreted in terms of increasingly competent emotion regulation across the life span.

Adult↗
PubMed1995

Emotional behavior in long-term marriage.

In exploring the emotional climate of long-term marriages, this study used an observational coding system to identify specific emotional behaviors expressed by middle-aged and older spouses during discussions of a marital problem. One hundred and fifty-six couples differing in age and marital satisfaction were studied. Emotional behaviors expressed by couples differed as a function of age, gender, and marital satisfaction. In older couples, the resolution of conflict was less emotionally negative and more affectionate than in middle-aged marriages. Differences between husbands and wives and between happy and unhappy marriages were also found. Wives were more affectively negative than husbands, whereas husbands were more defensive than wives, and unhappy marriages involved greater exchange of negative affect than happy marriages.

Adult↗
PubMed1994

The influence of age and gender on affect, physiology, and their interrelations: a study of long-term marriages.

Self-reported affect and autonomic and somatic physiology were studied during three 15-min conversations (events of the day, problem area, pleasant topic) in a sample of 151 couples in long-term marriages. Couples differed in age (40-50 or 60-70) and marital satisfaction (satisfied or dissatisfied). Marital interaction in older couples was associated with more affective positivity and lower physiological arousal (even when controlling for affective differences) than in middle-age couples. As has previously been found with younger couples, marital dissatisfaction was associated with less positive affect, greater negative affect, and greater negative affect reciprocity. In terms of the relation between physiological arousal and affective experience, husbands reported feeling more negative the more they were physiologically aroused; for wives, affect and arousal were not correlated. These findings are related to theories of socioemotional change with age and of gender differences in marital behavior and health.

Adult↗
PubMed1994

Close emotional relationships in late life: further support for proactive aging in the social domain.

The idea that age-related reductions in network size are proactively managed by older people is explored by examining the interrelationships among chronological age, network composition, social support, and feelings of social embeddedness (FSE) in a representative sample of 156 community-dwelling and institutionalized adults ages 70-104 years. Comparisons between people with and without nuclear families are made to explore the influence of opportunity structures on network size. Social networks of very old people are nearly half as large as those of old people, but the number of very close relationships does not differentiate age groups. Among Ss without living nuclear family members, the number of emotionally close social partners predicted FSE better than among Ss with nuclear family members. Findings provide evidence for proactive selection, compensation, and optimization toward the goal of emotional enhancement and social functioning in old age.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1994

The salience of emotion across the adult life span.

Recent research on emotion has rendered equivocal traditional views of diminished emotionality in late life. This study focused on the salience of emotion in 83 Ss age 20 to 83 years. Using an incidental memory paradigm, Ss read a narrative containing equivalent amounts of emotional and neutral information. Salience was measured by the proportion of emotional versus neutral phrases recalled at the end of a 1-hr experimental session. Contrary to models of diminished emotionality, results suggest that the relative salience of emotion increases linearly with age and cohort. Results are discussed within the framework of cognitive theories of adult development and socioemotional selectivity theory.

Adult↗
PubMed1993

Long-term marriage: age, gender, and satisfaction.

Long-term marriages (N = 156) varying in spouses' age (40-50 years or 60-70 years) and relative marital satisfaction (satisfied and dissatisfied) were studied. Spouses independently completed demographic, marital, and health questionnaires and then participated in a laboratory-based procedure focused on areas of conflict and sources of pleasure. Findings supported a positive view of older marriages. Compared with middle-aged marriages, older couples evidenced (a) reduced potential for conflict and greater potential for pleasure in several areas (including children), (b) equivalent levels of overall mental and physical health, and (c) lesser gender differences in sources of pleasure. The relation between marital satisfaction and health was stronger for women than for men. In satisfied marriages, wives' and husbands' health was equivalent; in dissatisfied marriages, wives reported more mental and physical health problems than did their husbands.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1992

Social and emotional patterns in adulthood: support for socioemotional selectivity theory.

This investigation explored 2 hypotheses derived from socioemotional selectivity theory: (a) Selective reductions in social interaction begin in early adulthood and (b) emotional closeness to significant others increases rather than decreases in adulthood even when rate reductions occur. Transcribed interviews with 28 women and 22 men from the Child Guidance Study, conducted over 34 years, were reviewed and rated for frequency of interaction, satisfaction with the relationship, and degree of emotional closeness in 6 types of relationships. Interaction frequency with acquaintances and close friends declined from early adulthood on. Interaction frequency with spouses and siblings increased across the same time period and emotional closeness increased throughout adulthood in relationships with relatives and close friends. Findings suggest that individuals begin narrowing their range of social partners long before old age.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1992

Motivation for social contact across the life span: a theory of socioemotional selectivity.

Older people engage in social interaction less frequently than their younger counterparts. As I mentioned at the start, the change has been interpreted in largely negative terms. Yet when asked about their social relationships, older people describe them as satisfying, supportive, and fulfilling. Marriages are less negative and more positive. Close relationships with siblings are renewed, and relationships with children are better than ever before. Even though older people interact with others less frequently than younger people do, old age is not a time of misery, rigidity, or melancholy. Rather than present a paradox, I argue here that decreasing rates of contact reflect a reorganization of the goal hierarchies that underlie motivation for social contact and lead to greater selectivity in social partners. This reorganization does not occur haphazardly. Self-definition, information seeking, and emotion regulation are ranked differently depending not only on past experiences, but on place in the life cycle and concomitant expectations about the future. I contend that the emphasis on emotion in old age results from a recognition of the finality of life. In most people's lives this does not appear suddenly in old age but occurs gradually across adulthood. At times, however, life events conspire to bring about endings more quickly. Whether as benign as a geographical relocation or as sinister as a fatal disease, endings heighten the salience of surrounding emotions. When each interaction with a grandchild or good-bye kiss to a spouse may be the last, a sense of poignancy may permeate even the most casual everyday experiences. When the regulation of emotion assumes greatest priority among social motives, social partners are carefully chosen. The most likely choices will be long-term friends and loved ones, because they are most likely to provide positive emotional experiences and affirm the self. Information seeking will motivate some social behavior, but for reasons discussed previously, this will also require judicious choices of social partners. Narrowing the range of social partners allows people to conserve physical and cognitive resources, freeing time and energy for selected social relationships. As such, SST is highly consistent with the selective optimization with compensation model of successful aging formulated by P. Baltes and M. Baltes (1990) described above. SST is meant to describe and explain the underlying mechanisms for age-related changes in social behavior. It is not intended to be prescriptive.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)

Adolescent↗
PubMed1991

Emotion, physiology, and expression in old age.

Emotion-specific autonomic nervous system (ANS) activity was studied in 20 elderly people (age 71-83 years, M = 77) who followed muscle-by-muscle instructions for constructing facial prototypes of emotional expressions and relived past emotional experiences. Results indicated that (a) patterns of emotion-specific ANS activity produced by these tasks closely resembled those found in other studies with younger Ss, (b) the magnitude of change in ANS measures was smaller in older than in younger Ss, (c) patterns of emotion-specific ANS activity showed generality across the 2 modes of elicitation, (d) emotion self-reports and spontaneous production of emotional facial expressions that occurred during relived emotional memories were comparable with those found in younger Ss, (e) elderly men and women did not differ in emotional physiology or facial expression, and (f) elderly women reported experiencing more intense emotions when reliving emotional memories than did elderly men.

Aged↗
PubMed1990

Mental health needs of the chronically mentally ill elderly.

The treatment histories and current social, financial, and clinical status of 111 chronically mentally ill (CMI) persons over the age of 60 were examined. Information was obtained from Ss, family, mental health records, and mental health professionals familiar with Ss. Psychiatric symptoms were observed in 74% of Ss. Many Ss experienced long periods without acute episodes of illness. Recurring episodes eventually appeared in most Ss, however, and ongoing deficits in daily functioning and social contacts were prototypical. Two thirds of the Ss were living in the community, relying heavily on family contacts; the rest lived primarily in nursing homes (23.4%) or psychiatric hospitals (7.2%). Social support was the best predictor of level of functioning. Findings suggest that failure of CMI elderly to use mental health services is not due to lack of need. Mental health services currently do not appear to be meeting the needs of this population.

Activities of Daily Living↗
PubMed1990

Choosing social partners: how old age and anticipated endings make people more selective.

Carstensen's selectivity theory, which explains age-related change in social behavior in terms of emotion conservation and increasing discrimination among social partners, was investigated in 2 studies. In Study 1, 80 people aged 14 to 95 classified descriptions of people according to their similarities as social partners in terms of affect anticipated in the interaction and that this dimension was most important to older people. Study 2 showed how anticipated social endings influence partner selection: 380 people aged 11 to 92 chose familiar or novel partners under unspecified and ending conditions. Overall, older people chose familiar partners most frequently; yet when social endings were salient, younger people patterned the preferences of the elderly. These results suggest that social partner selectivity functions to conserve emotion resources in the face of limited future opportunities.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1989

Age differences in coping: does less mean worse.

Previous research suggests that elderly people utilize fewer coping strategies than younger people. Some researchers suggest that these quantitative changes reflect decreases in the use of maladaptive strategies; others contend that they reflect decreases in the use of adaptive strategies by older adults. The present article reports the findings of three studies of coping in older people, two addressing coping with health problems, and the other addressing coping with moving. In all three studies, the number of self-reported coping strategies decreases with age. Results do not support the idea that decreases in the number of strategies imply decrements in the quality of coping, however: in two studies, age was unrelated to the effectiveness of strategies, in the third, effectiveness ratings were higher for older subjects. The need for evaluation of specific outcomes of coping strategies is discussed, along with the need for task-specific measurement of coping. It is proposed that decreases in the number of coping strategies reflect improved coping efficiency, rather than a deterioration of adaptational skills.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1986

Clustering of teenage suicides after television news stories about suicide.

We examined the relation between 38 nationally televised news or feature stories about suicide from 1973 to 1979 and the fluctuation of the rate of suicide among American teenagers before and after these stories. The observed number of suicides by teenagers from zero to seven days after these broadcasts (1666) was significantly greater than the number expected (1555; P = 0.008). The more networks that carried a story about suicide, the greater was the increase in suicides thereafter (P = 0.0004). These findings persisted after correction for the effects of the day of the week, the month, holidays, and yearly trends. Teenage suicides increased more than adult suicides after stories about suicide (6.87 vs. 0.45 percent). Suicides increased as much after general-information or feature stories about suicide as after news stories about a particular suicide. Six alternative explanations of these findings were assessed, including the possibility that the results were due to misclassification or were statistical artifacts. We conclude that the best available explanation is that television stories about suicide trigger additional suicides, perhaps because of imitation.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1986

Enhancing the social environments of elderly nursing home residents: are high rates of interaction enough?

We investigated the social validity of a common intervention (i.e., serving food during a social hour) that has been reported to facilitate social interaction among nursing home residents. Using a group reversal design, rates of interaction were measured. In addition, the vocal content of the interactions was recorded and coded by raters blind to condition. Rates of interaction more than doubled during the treatment phases, but ineffective vocal behavior accounted for the bulk of the increase. Results suggest the need to examine the utility of such programs in nursing homes.

Aged↗
PubMed1985

Behavioral treatment of the geriatric alcohol abuser: a long term follow-up study.

The present study represents a long-term follow-up of elderly persons who completed a behavioral treatment program for alcohol problems. Subjects over the age of 60 at the time they obtained treatment for alcohol abuse were contacted two to four years after discharge. Interviews with the alcohol abuser and a significant other were conducted in an effort to identify the percentage of persons for whom treatment had sustained beneficial effects, differences in outcome for early-versus late-onset alcohol abusers, and demographic and daily activity variables that distinguish abstinent from nonabstinent individuals. Results suggest that beneficial effects of the program maintained for 50% of the patients two or more years following completion of the program. An additional 12% reported significant modification of their drinking. Directions for future research are suggested.

Age Factors↗