Lecture 9: Adulthood Flashcards
1
Q
The family life cycle
A
- In early adulthood,
people typically live on
their own, then marry,
then have children. - In middle-age, their
children leave home,
parenting
responsibilities
diminish. - Late adulthood brings
retirement, growing
old, death of spouse.
2
Q
Early adulthood
A
- Vocational choice
- Relationships
3
Q
Selecting a Vocation
A
- In societies with many career possibilities, occupational choice is a gradual
process that begins long before adolescence. - Theories of vocational development involve:
1)Fantasy period : early-mid childhood; kids fantasize about career options
2) tentative period: age 11-16; kids think about careers in terms of their
interests, then in terms of their abilities & values
3)** realistic period:** late teens-early twenties; start to narrow their options
4
Q
Factors Influencing Vocational Choice
A
- Personality
* Theory of personality types that affect vocational choice:
+ Investigative: enjoys working with ideas: scientific occupation
+ Social: likes interacting with people: human services
+ Realistic: prefers real-world problems and working with objects: mechanical
occupation
+ Artistic: high need for individual expression: artistic field
+ Conventional: likes well-structured tasks, values material possessions & social status:
business
+ Enterprising: adventurous, persuasive, strong leader: sales, supervisory positions or
politics
* Research shows a moderate relationship between these personality types
and vocational choice
* But many people are blends of several personality types and can do well at
more than one kind of occupation
5
Q
Factors Influencing Vocational Choice
A
- Family Influences
* SES: impacts type of career chosen - Differences in type of information provided by parents and parenting
practices
Strong predictor of status (Ceo, middle man, low paying) coorelated with educational levels and so ses
- Years of schooling completed powerfully predicts occupational status
- But parental pressure to do well in school and encouragement
toward high-status occupations predict vocational attainment
beyond SES
6
Q
Factors Influencing Vocational Choice
A
- Teachers
* Young adults who choose careers requiring extensive education often
report that teachers influenced their choice.
* Teachers offering encouragement and acting as role models can be an
important source of resilience.
Informing youth about options could also help
7
Q
Factors Influencing Vocational Choice
A
- Gender Stereotypes
* Women are (slowly) moving more into vocations typically
held by men
* Engineers, lawyers, doctors, business execs still mainly male;
nurses, teachers still typically female
* Why?
* Children’s exposure to gender stereotypes (drawings of scientists)
* Adolescence: Gender-stereotyped messages in high school decrease
girls’ confidence in their abilities
* Young adulthood: concern about succeeding in male-dominated
fields
* Young adulthood: concern about managing family and career
responsibilities
* Men have changed little in their interest in nontraditional
occupations
* Although many men do work happily in them
8
Q
Dropping out of post-secondary school
A
- 16% of Canadian university students and 25% of college students
drop out - Most within the first year
- What happens to them?
- 119 young adults who had started university but dropped out.
Interviewed 7 years after starting college/university. - Interviewed about reasons for leaving school, contentment with
decision, current employment.
9
Q
Results
A
- Decision to drop out did not necessarily predict negative
outcomes - More than half of the participants transferred to another
school - 83% of those graduated
- Only 2.5% of the participants were unemployed
- Reasons for leaving school?
- 65% identified typical reasons in emerging adulthood
- changing career direction, identity exploration, and mobility of residence
- 35% mentioned negative circumstances
- failing grades, medical problems, financial difficulties
- Most were content with their decision to drop out
10
Q
Intimacy vs. Isolation
A
- Maturity involves balancing the desire for self-determination with the
desire for intimacy - Previous stage: identity vs. role confusion For both genders,
- identity achievement is positively correlated with fidelity and love
- identity moratorium (searching for identity) is negatively associated with these outcomes
- Moratorium lasts much longer now than decades ago
11
Q
Close relationships: Romantic Love
A
- Biological and social forces contribute to mate selection
Intimate partners generally meet in places where they find people of
their own age, ethnicity, SES, religion
Dating sites: often filter according to these factors
- We usually select partners who resemble ourselves in attitudes,
personality, educational plans, intelligence
The more similar partners are, the more satisfied they tend to be with
their relationship. - Opposites don’t attract!
12
Q
Pheromones and mate choice
A
- Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC): proteins that regulate the
immune system. Genetically coded. - Lead to specific scent in pheromones
- We sniff out a mate whose immune system is optimally different from our own!
- Offspring then have more diverse, robust immune systems
- Women smell dirty t-shirts. Which one would you prefer to socialize
with? - Select shirts from men with MHC genes that differed from their own
- Opposite pattern for women on birth control pills!
- Implications?
13
Q
Differences in male and female criteria for choosing a partner
reflect evolutionary theory
A
- Women
- value intelligence, ambition, financial status, and moral character
- prefer slightly older mate
- Men
- prefer a younger mate
- place more emphasis on physical attractiveness and domestic skills
- But neither men nor women put good looks, earning power, and mate’s age relative
to their own at the top of their wish list. They place a higher value on relationship
satisfaction.
14
Q
Close relationships: Friendships
A
- Adult friends are usually similar in age, sex, and SES.
- Women have more intimate same-sex friendships than men (though
see Figure 11.10), and often prefer to just talk with friends, while
male friends generally prefer to do an activity - Good sibling relationships in adulthood are also important sources of
psychological well-being
15
Q
Leaving the parental home
A
- average age of moving out decreased in recent decades
- due to increase in higher education, living independently before marriage
- but many young adults return home briefly (boomerang kids)
- 2016, 2021 census: 35% in Canada and 42% in Ontario living with parents
- COVID increased this further
- Less common now to leave home to marry
- Leave home to express adult status
- Outcomes:
- When young adults are prepared for independence and feel secure,
departure from the home is linked to more satisfying parent–child interaction
and successful transition to adult roles
16
Q
Getting married
A
- Less common but still dominant in Canada
- https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.act
ion?pid=3910005501 - Common law increasing
- 6% in 1981…23% in 2021
- Happening later (older) than previous
generations - Mean age of first marriage: 30.7 years
(Statistics Canada, 2020) - ~ 40% of marriages end in divorce
- Average age of divorce: 46 years old
17
Q
Marital Satisfaction
A
- Key factors: family backgrounds, age at marriage, relationship to
extended family, personality characteristics - Quality of the marital relationship predicts mental health for men and
women - In industrialized nations, satisfaction for men and women positively
correlated with - equal power in the relationship
- sharing of family responsibilities
18
Q
Cohabitation, Gender, & Marital Commitment
A
- 197 couples, mean age=27 years
- Cohabitation before marriage
- No cohabitation until engagement/marriage
- Likert-style dedication scale to measure relationship commitment.
- My relationship with my partner is clearly part of my future life
plans. - I like to think of my partner and me more in terms of ‘us’ and ‘we’
than ‘me’ and ‘him/her’. - After 3 years of marriage, completed Marital Adjustment Test (MAT).
- Gives an idea of agreement on major issues between spouses,
happiness with the marriage
19
Q
Results
A
- Men who cohabited before engagement or marriage were less dedicated to
their wives than men who did not - Premarital cohabitation had no effect on women’s dedication to their
husbands - Interpretation:
- Women may be more likely than men to view cohabitation as a step toward
marriage. - Some women may also view cohabitation as an opportunity to coax a reluctant
partner into marriage. - Recommendation:
- If you are considering cohabitation, discuss your commitment to and expectations
about the relationship first!
20
Q
The Decision to Have Children
A
- Key factors: financial circumstances, personal and religious values,
health conditions - Women
- with traditional gender identities usually decide to have children
- with high-status, demanding careers less often choose parenthood/delay it
- Reasons given for having children:
- warm, affectionate relationship
- stimulation and fun
21
Q
Transition to Parenthood
A
- In the early weeks after a baby’s birth, gender roles of men and
women usually become more traditional. - A new baby does not typically cause significant marital strain, but
troubled marriages usually become more troubled. - Shared caregiving predicts greater parental happiness and sensitivity
to the baby. - Dual-earner marriages: larger disparity in parental responsibilities associated
with greater decline in marital satisfaction after childbirth, especially for
women.
22
Q
Single adults
A
- Rates of never-married 30- 34-yr-olds have risen sharply
- about 1/3 of males and 1/4 of females
- also divorced adults
- Pros and cons
- Freedom, mobility
- Loneliness, dating, limited social life, insecurity
- Common to experience high stress in late 20s
- May be due to negative stereotyping of singles
23
Q
Divorce and remarriage
A
- Strongest predictors of divorce: infidelity, spending money foolishly,
drinking /drugs
Increased chances of divorce if
* younger at marriage
* had parents who divorced
* low level of education
* low SES
- On average, people remarry within four years of divorce, men
somewhat faster than women. - Remarriages especially vulnerable to breakup
- negative patterns of interaction carried over from the first marriage
- stress resulting from stepfamily situations
- Blended families generally take 3-5 years to develop the
connectedness and comfort of intact biological families.
24
Q
Middle adulthood
A
- Relationships
Sandwich generation - Cognitive development
25
Q
Well-being
A
- Most adults at this stage live with someone
- Marital satisfaction: major predictor of psychological well-being
- Divorce often more manageable/less traumatic than at earlier stages
26
Q
Caring for parents in middle adulthood
A
- Trend: parents care for children > children care for parents
- But note exceptions
Sandwich generation
27
Q
Cognitive Development: Middle Adulthood
A
- Cognitive abilities change with age, but not all changes are bad!
28
Q
Cohort effects can be misleading
A
- Research with IQ tests: generally indicates that intelligence declines in
middle and late adulthood (from age 35 onwards) - Thought to be a sign of the brain deteriorating
- But much of this research is cross-sectional
- Why is this important?
- Longitudinal research (ADDING PEOPLE AT EACH TIME POINT)shows opposite pattern: increase in
performance with age!
RESULTS:
* No systematic worsening of
overall cognitive abilities with
age
* So IQ tests aren’t a great measure
of ability (too broad)
* Fluid skills tend to decline
earlier for women: ability to detect relationships among visual stimuli,
speed of analyzing information, and capacity of working memory
* Crystalized skills decline earlier
for men: skills that depend on accumulated
knowledge and experience, good judgment, and mastery of social
conventions
* Both quite good in middle adulthood
- Beyond age 60-65, fluid components of intelligence decline more
than crystallized components
29
Q
Information processing
A
Many components that change with age:
* Speed of Processing
* Attention
* Memory
* Practical problem solving
* Expertise
* Creativity
30
Q
Speed of processing
A
- RT increases from age 20 onwards
- Why? Some form of changes in the brain
Hypotheses:
* neural network view
* as neurons die, breaks in neural networks occur
* the brain adapts by forming new synaptic connections (bypasses) that go around the
breaks but are less efficient
* information-loss view
* older adults experience more loss of information as it moves through the cognitive
system, so the whole system must slow down to process the information
31
Q
Attention and Memory
A
- Multi-tasking (holding two items in mind at once) worsens with age
- Switching between tasks also becomes more difficult
- Part of attention is inhibiting responses to some stimuli
This also worsens with age
Can lead to appearance of highly distractible older adults - Working memory capacity decreases from about age 20 onwards
Possibly because of decrease in use of memory strategies
How to help
* Slow down pace of learning
* Practice with attentional demands (e.g., Neuro-racer)
But beware pseudoscience, limited gains
32
Q
Gains
A
- Expertise
- aids middle-aged adults in practical problem solving
- Near peak in middle adulthood
- Creativity
- much variability in age-related changes
- Often peaks between age 35-45
33
Q
65+
A
- Different subgroups based on function more than age:
- Young-old
- Old-old
- Oldest-old
34
Q
Push back against ageism!
A
- Encourage active lifestyle, even in older adults
- Engage in multigenerational interactions
- Take note of individual differences
- Advocate for support as needed
- Avoid elderspeak
35
Q
Life expectancy
A
- Women > Men
- Increases with income, education
- Ethnicity/SES
- life expectancy for First Nations 15
years shorter than non-indigenous
Canadians (Philpott, 2018) - Life expectancy for African Americans
3 years shorter than Caucasians (USA) - Country
- Twins!
36
Q
Life expectancy: Twins!
A
- Danish Twin Registry: 2932 pairs of same-sex twins
- Born in Denmark 1870-1900
- Age at death: Twins vs. overall Danish population
- Twins live longer than non-twins
- Identical > fraternal
- Timing and size of benefit depends on gender
- Men: peak benefit of having a twin in mid-40s (6%)
- Women: peak mortality benefit in their early 60s (10%)
37
Q
Why???
A
- Social support? Relationships?
- Marriage protection effect: people who are married are healthier
- But self-selection bias
- No self-selection with twins
- Material, emotional support may increase longevity
38
Q
Physical changes: Vision
A
- Cornea foggy: light scattered
- Lens yellows: colour
- Cataracts
39
Q
Macular degeneration
A
- Leading cause of blindness in
late adulthood - Retinal cells in macula break
down - 10-30% of older adults
- Stress cycle
40
Q
Risk factors
A
- Age
- Smoking
- Genotype
- UV light
- Lack of regular exercise
- Light-coloured eyes (melanin)
- High-fat diet, abdominal obesity
in men
41
Q
Hearing
A
- Reduced blood supply to
auditory cortex - Stiffening of membranes
- Cell death
- Amplification
- Certain frequencies
- Emotional inflection
42
Q
Tinnitus
A
- Perception of sound without
stimulus - 10% of adults; 1/3 of adults over
65 - Effective treatment?
- Drugs
- Attention/mindfulness
- neurofeedback
- Nerve stimulation
43
Q
Smell, touch, taste
A
- All decrease with age
- Perhaps due to neural changes
- Perhaps due to damage
- Implications
- Safety
- Enjoyment of food
44
Q
Implications of physical deterioration
A
- Staff/family underestimate competence of elderly
- Respond to REAL weaknesses of elderly: necessary care provided
- Respond to EXPECTED weaknesses of elderly: can induce dependency
- Dependency-support script vs independence-ignore script
- Dependent individuals get more support than independent ones
- Applied without consideration of competence can foster decline
- Elderly not using/practicing skills they still possess
- Social interaction centred on support (dependence) not nearly as
reinforcing as more independent social interaction - Feeling like a burden
- Depression
- Decreased if older adult has control over what areas of life receive support
45
Q
Training for staff
A
- Long-term care facilities
- Training for staff
- Updated information on aging (plasticity, etc.)
- Training and practice in effective behaviour modification
- Measures
- Dependent-Support, Independence-Ignore responses in staff pre- and posttraining
- Independent and dependent behaviours in residents
