Biomedical subjects

Susan Bluck

Publications and source records attributed to Susan Bluck.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2004

Making things better and learning a lesson: experiencing wisdom across the lifespan.

Autobiographical memory narratives concerning times in which individuals said, thought, or did something wise were collected from adolescents and young and old adults. This "wisdom of experience" procedure is shown to be a valid means of studying experienced wisdom in everyday lives across the life span. Results show that all age groups use experienced wisdom to transform negative to positive life situations and are equally likely to link these experienced wisdom events to larger temporal life periods. Young and older adults also relate wisdom experiences to the life story by explaining how they are connected to later life consequences or to the direction that their life has taken. Unlike adolescents, older and, especially, young adults report having learned lessons about themselves or having gained a life philosophy from the wisdom-related event. Thus, the wisdom-of-experience procedure highlights both similarities and differences in the life span manifestation of experienced wisdom.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2003

Looking back and looking ahead: adult age differences in consistency of diachronous ratings of subjective well-being.

The goal of this study is to investigate the consistency of diachronous ratings of subjective well-being (SWB). A heterogeneous sample (25-74-year-olds; N = 3,596) provided ratings of their present SWB, reconstructed their SWB of 10 years ago, and anticipated their SWB 10 years from now. Developmental tasks and self-evaluative principles were used to predict age differences in diachronous consistency. As predicted, in young adulthood, past SWB was rated lower and future SWB higher than present SWB. In contrast, in later adulthood, the past was rated higher and the future lower than present SWB. Analyses of rank-order consistency demonstrated that in later adulthood both future and past SWB were more strongly related to present SWB than in young adulthood. Results show how models of self-evaluation play out at different points in the life span.

Adult↗

PubMed2003

Autobiographical memory: exploring its functions in everyday life.

This special issue of Memory spotlights research that uses a functional approach to investigate autobiographical memory (AM) in everyday life. This approach relies on studying cognition, in this case AM, taking into account the psychological, social, or cultural-historic context in which it occurs. Areas of interest include understanding to what ends AM is used by individuals and in social relationships, how it is related to other cognitive abilities and emotional states, and how memory represents our inner and outer world. One insight gained by taking this approach is that levels and types of accuracy need not always be regarded as memory "failures" but are sometimes integral to a self-memory system that serves a variety of meaningful ends of human activity. Previously hypothesised functions of AM fall into three broad domains: self, social, and directive. Each of the contributions addresses how AM serves one or more of these functions and thereby examines the usefulness and adequacy of this trio.

Behavior↗

PubMed2003

Why are you telling me that? A conceptual model of the social function of autobiographical memory.

In an effort to stimulate and guide empirical work within a functional framework, this paper provides a conceptual model of the social functions of autobiographical memory (AM) across the lifespan. The model delineates the processes and variables involved when AMs are shared to serve social functions. Components of the model include: lifespan contextual influences, the qualitative characteristics of memory (emotionality and level of detail recalled), the speaker's characteristics (age, gender, and personality), the familiarity and similarity of the listener to the speaker, the level of responsiveness during the memory-sharing process, and the nature of the social relationship in which the memory sharing occurs (valence and length of the relationship). These components are shown to influence the type of social function served and/or, the extent to which social functions are served. Directions for future empirical work to substantiate the model and hypotheses derived from the model are provided.

Age Factors↗