Chapter 8: Well-being across the Lifespan Flashcards
Life changes
- Life events: consists of normative and non-normative events
a. Normative: expected life changes, easier to prepare for/anticipate
b. Non-normative: unexpected life changes, harder to prep for/anticipate - Adaptation to change: consists of assimilation and accommodation
a. Assimilation: minor tweak to your life goal, may need to change the process and not the outcome
b. Accommodation: bigger adjustments are necessary, you may need to change the goal/outcome and possibly change how you perceive yourself as well - Ego resiliency: Flexibility in how people adapt to change. High ego resiliency associated with higher well-being
Stage models - Erikson’s Stages of Psychosocial Development
At each stage, you face a task/crisis that you must resolve. How you handle this crisis directly influences your development and can lead to the development of certain virtues.
- Crisis Resolution
- Develop Virtues
- Dynamic Balance
- Generativity
- Well-being
- Commitment script
Generativity
The propensity and willingness to engage in acts that promote the wellbeing of younger generations as a way of ensuring the long-term survival of the species (The Psychology of Mattering, 2018). Your positive influence outlives you, has a lasting impact. Particularly prominent in women. High generativity increases well-being.
Commitment script
Story of one’s life: I’ve been through tough times, someone helped me so I want to help others, or increased empathy/motivation to help others. This life story of overcoming difficulties is associated with generativity.
Life span/Course models
- Positive Youth Development: Consists of personal traits and environmental support/assets
a. Individual strengths: character strengths and virtues
b. Developmental assets: boy scouts, Big Brothers/Big Sisters, church, colleges, etc. - Five Cs: Competence, confidence, connection, character and caring. 6th C: compassion. These are outcomes of positive youth development and indicators that these kids are thriving.
- Penn Resiliency Program: Developed by Seligman, uses learned optimism model, ABCDE approach.
Follow-up has demonstrated that these kids have higher rates of resiliency, better health, less mental health issues
Components of emerging adulthood
- ID exploration: figuring out who you are/will be (ID confusion can lead to decreased well-being)
- Instability: job changes, relationship changes, moving
- Self-focus: really working on themselves at this life stage, time/money is their own
- Feeling in-between: not fully children but not fully “adults”
- Possibilities: lots of different opportunities to explore various possibilities (job, work, home)
Midlife crisis
Differences in happiness between ages, seems to be a dip in well-being around 40-50 age range (early 40s for women, late 50s for men).
Effect size of change in avg. life satisfaction score is about 6/10ths, small effect size but still meaningful. After midlife point, men tend to report better well-being than women.
Younger well-being
Normative events: social & leisure
Strengths: exploring & hope
Self-discrepancy: Larger
PWB & SWB: PWB > SWB (If less educated, then likely to be low on both)
Middle-aged well-being
Normative events: Relationships
Strengths: Love/be loved
Self-discrepancy: Larger
PWB & SWB: PWB = SWB
Older well-being
Normative events: Education & work Strengths: Self-regulation Self-discrepancy: Smaller Psychological WB: + Autonomy \+ Mastery \+ Self-acceptance - Life Purpose - Personal growth (Relationships) PWB & SWB: High on both
Successful aging characteristics
Positivity effect (result of experincing less NA).
Frequency & intensity of emotion - tend to be more even-keeled, less fluctuation in emotions.
Environmental selection - have the perspective that their time is precious (wisdom), can be more selective, easier to say no to unwanted activities.
Temporal realism - more realistic affective forecasting, more realistic view of past.
Emotional complexity - more nuanced view/understanding of emotions.
Relatedness - focus on important relationships.
Mindfulness - more inclined towards being present in the moment.
Accommodation of goals - being able to change goal/outcome to be more realistic in the process.
Accept & compensate - relates to accommodation, ability to accept change and compensate accordingly.
Self-regulation - ability tends to increase w/ age, assoc. w/ greater w/b.
Socio-emotional selectivity
Basic psychological goals remain throughout the lifespan, but their salience changes depending on one’s place in the life cycle.
Adolescence/early adulthood: focus on knowledge trajectory
Middle age/old age: focus on emotional trajectory (relationship quality/support)
Individual differences approach
Helson & Srivastava (2001): Longitudinal study on college women. Maturity criteria:
1. Competence
2. Wisdom
3. Ego development
4. Generativity
Positive development paths:
1. Achievers: high-achieving, career-focused, max +/min -
2. Conservers: traditional, moderate +/-
2. Seekers: explore, differ from norm/break mold, high +/-
4. [depleted] - negative outcome not assoc. w/ maturity
Labouvie-Vief & Medler (2002)
Theory: People regulate their emotion by primarily using two strategies -
1. Affect optimization: attempts to maximize positive emotions and dampen negative emotions.
2. Affect complexity: attempts to coordinate positive and negative emotions into cognitive-emotional schemas that are both flexible and integrated.
Four regulation styles were found:
1. Integrated: emphasize + emotions and emotional complexity
2. Defended: emphasize + emotions, low affect complexity
3. Complex: moderate + emotion, high emotional complexity
4. Dysregulated: low on both + emotion and emotional complexity
Life narratives approach
Creative constructions and story themes.
Creative constructions
- Coherent positive resolution: main character has conflict, works on conflict toward resolution (all’s well that ends well)
- Exploratory narrative processing: messier story, more details on emotions and more emotional processing, more time including the negative aspects (than coherent)
- Transformational processing: combo of exploratory narrative processing and coherent positive resolution - work through the messy emotions and then resolve w/ + resolution
Story themes
- Redemptive sequence: common in US, rise to the occasion, gain insight/learn lesson
- Myth of the hero: learn a lesson and then share it with others!
- Goal pursuit: how we go after our goals/frame them influences our goal attainment and well-being
- Age identity: story you tell yourself about your age has a major impact on your well-being
Responses to trauma
- Struggling to adjust: PTSD, depression, anxiety, possibly suicide, left-tail of curve
- Resilience: how most people respond to a negative experience, middle of curve
- Post-traumatic growth - personal growth that stems from how you process a traumatic exp. right-tail of curve
Resilience
“Ordinary magic”, ability to bounce back from a negative event, good outcomes/Absence of psychopathology following adversity.
Werner’s Kauai study
Longitudinal study started in 1955 of approx. 700 at risk families
Approx. 1/3 of kids were resilient (same # of dogs that showed resilience in Seligman’s learned helplessness experiment)
At age 40: 5 out of 6 were doing well - more of them had developed resiliency!
Characteristics of resilience
- Positive adult relationships: Nurturing surrogate parent, role model/mentor
- Positive Peer Relationship(s): Good social & communication skills, at least one good friend
- Creative outlet/Area of competence
- Optimistic/Internal locus of control
- Religious beliefs
Newer perspective on resilience
Resilience is the result of an interaction between child and environment.
- Child factors (e.g., competence, optimism)
- Family factors (e.g., function, income, consistent care)
- Community factors (e.g., schools, churches, neighborhood)
- Cultural factors (e.g., social conditions, economic patterns)
Fixed mindset
Praise qualities
- Avoid challenges - believe that intelligence is fixed, unchangeable
- Give up easily - give up on challenges that you don’t think you can achieve
- Equate effort with failure
- Don’t like criticism
- Feel threatened by others’ success (see them as smarter than you)
Growth mindset
Praise effort (much better outcome for well-being) Be careful how you praise children for what they do! Praise them for how hard they worked, engagement, enthusiasm, encourage them for how their effort paid off and resulted in the outcome.
Cultivating resilience
- Moderate levels of adversity (you need some adversity to help you build resilience)
- Positive relationships
- Positive emotionality
- Life narrative of “doors opening” (as one closes, another opens)
- Accept change as part of life
- Work toward goals
- Use problem- & task-focused coping
- Self-discovery
- Positive self view
- Keep events in perspective (gets easier w/ age)
- Maintain hopeful outlook
- Self-care
Sense of coherence
Unique set of personality traits that create an orientation to life allowing people to interpret life stressors in a positive and adaptive way, that is, as coherent and understandable despite adversity.
- Meaningfulness
- Comphrehensibility
- Mangeability
Post-traumatic growth
Significant changes in life goals in life commitments that require major alterations in one’s sense of identity or life narrative.
- Goal disengagement
- Action to new goals
- Meaning and purpose
The Harvard study
Mature defense mechanisms: Deal with anxiety by attempting to maximize gratification but simultaneously allow awareness of underlying feelings, impulses, ideas and consequences of behavior.
Benefits perceived health, well-being, relationships, and job/income.
Predictors of thriving: Don’t smoke cigarettes and maintain quality relationships!
Davis, Nolen-Hoeksema, & Larson (2003) study summary (Making sense/benefitting)
Participants were people with family members in hospice care. Conducted interviews at pre-loss, then at 6 and 13 months post-loss (of loved one). Supporting their hypothesis, the age of deceased at death (older), religious beliefs and pre-loss distress level predicted making sense of the loss. Optimism-pessimism levels predicted benefit-finding, with people high in trait optimism most likely to report
a benefit-finding response.
Both forms of finding meaning were associated with decreased distress at the 6 and 13 month post-loss interviews.
Making sense and benefit finding are independent forms of finding meaning that help people adjust to loss (no association between being able to make sense and benefit finding!) Results indicate that making sense of the loss is associated with less distress, but only in the 1st year post-loss, whereas reports of benefit finding are most strongly associated with adjustment at interviews 13 and 18 months post-loss.
