PSYC 336 Week 5 DB Forum 3 Example

Discussion Board Forum 3: Thread and Reply

PSYC 336 Gerontology, Discussion Board Forum 3 (thread and one reply)

Thread by [Student Name]

The prompt, the writer's family example and the classmate's post are composites standing in for the course's own forum; the textbook and published studies are real; the requirements follow Liberty's public course guide for PSYC 336.

Thread

Two of my great-aunts were born a year apart and grew up in the same small town. Aunt June treated every birthday as a gift; at 80 she was still teaching a quilting class and planning a trip to see the Grand Canyon. Aunt Ruth announced at sixty that her useful years were over, stopped driving soon after and spent most of her seventies in a recliner. June lived to 93. Ruth died at 74. Their health was different, of course, and Ruth had a hard marriage and little money, but I have often wondered whether their attitudes toward aging played a part. June used to say that she was too busy to be old.

Quadagno (2018) explains that age stereotypes are learned early and reinforced by media and everyday interactions, so that by the time people reach later life, many have absorbed negative expectations about what aging means. Those expectations become part of how older people see themselves, which is why the same forgetfulness can feel like a normal slip to one person and a sign of decline to another.

A widely cited study suggests such self-perceptions matter. Levy et al. (2002) used survey data from 660 adults aged 50 and older in the Ohio Longitudinal Study of Aging and Retirement, matched to national death records. Ohioans who had agreed with hopeful statements about their own aging, in surveys taken as long as two decades before, ended up living roughly seven and a half years beyond those who had been gloomy. That gap survived statistical adjustment for how old the respondents were, their sex, their money and schooling, how lonely they felt and how well they could get around, and some of it traveled through a measure the authors called will to live.

Levy (2009) later proposed stereotype embodiment theory to explain how this happens. Stereotypes are absorbed across the lifespan, can work outside awareness, become more powerful when they apply to oneself and influence health through psychological, behavioral and physiological pathways.

Because nobody was assigned an attitude, the design cannot settle whether outlook causes longevity, and some people with poor health may have had darker views for good reason. Still, it suggests that how a culture talks about aging may become part of how its older members live. Later experiments by the same research group found that brief exposure to positive age stereotypes could improve older adults' performance on memory and balance tasks, which supports the idea that the effect is real rather than only a reflection of prior health (Levy, 2009).

Classmates: what do you expect old age to be like for you, and where did that expectation come from?

Reply to Kevin

Kevin, you said the study convinced you that people who age badly mostly have themselves to blame for their negative attitudes. I agree that the findings are striking, but I would be careful with that conclusion. Levy (2009) argues that negative self-perceptions of aging are largely absorbed from the surrounding culture, beginning in childhood, which means they are less a personal failing than the result of living among ageist messages for decades. The 2002 study controlled for health, but it could not account for every hardship that might make someone pessimistic about getting older, such as poverty or the loss of a spouse.

Quadagno (2018) shows how social conditions, including income and access to care, shape the experience of aging. If we blame individuals for their attitudes, we may overlook the structural ageism that produced them and the circumstances that make optimism hard. A more helpful response might be to change the messages older adults receive, through more realistic portrayals of aging and through programs that bring generations together. Do you think younger people's attitudes could be changed early enough to make a difference later, perhaps through schools or churches?

References

Levy, B. R. (2009). Stereotype embodiment: A psychosocial approach to aging. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 18(6), 332-336. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8721.2009.01662.x

Levy, B. R., Slade, M. D., Kunkel, S. R., & Kasl, S. V. (2002). Longevity increased by positive self-perceptions of aging. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83(2), 261-270. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.83.2.261

Quadagno, J. (2018). Aging and the life course: An introduction to social gerontology (7th ed.). McGraw-Hill Education.