Age Stereotypes, Aging Self-Perceptions, and Optimal Aging
Date Issued
2010
Date
2010
Author(s)
Wu, Chih-Hsun
Abstract
Many studies had found that “age stereotypes” and “aging self-perceptions” held by the person might affects his/her own health, survival, and optimal aging when he/she grows old. The aim of the study 1 of this thesis was to examine if “aging self- perception” affects longitudinal functional health and survival in Taiwanese older adults. Participants in study 1 included 3793 people (aged 60+) from a national representative database, the Taiwan Longitudinal Study of Aging (TLSA). TLSA began in 1989, and followed-up in 1993, 1996, 1999, and 2003. The aging self-perception were defined by 2 questions: “In your experiences, do you think it is 1)advantageous (yes/no), 2)disadvantageous (yes/no) when people get old?” asked in 1989, and were used to predict 1) functional health and subjective well-being during the 14 years period by analysis of covariance method; 2) basic functional health status of optimal aging in 2003 by ordinal logistic regression; and 3) survival status in 2004. For those people who reported “only disadvantages, no advantage”, the results showed that they had higher dying risk, shorter survival time, higher possibility to be categorized in poorer function status group 14years after, earlier and/or faster functional decline, poorer functional health and subjective well-being. On the contrary, those people who reported “both advantages and disadvantages” had the better results on functional health, subjective well-beings and survival.
The study 2 of this thesis was aim to explore the relations among age stereotypes, aging self-perceptions, goals of optimal aging, and health in older adults. The author proposed an “attitude toward aging and optimal aging” concept model, which hypothesized that while people growing old, they will try to cope with “aging”. One of the coping strategies was to modify one’s “age stereotypes” and “self- perceptions”, to reject those stereotypes and self-perception that related with one’s important aging goals, but to accept those that were not related. Participants of study 2 included 74 Taiwanese older adults (65+) from a clinical geriatric study. Three scales, the “goals of optimal aging” scale, the “age stereotype” scale, and the “aging self- perception” scale, were established first. Then participants were asked to fill these 3 scales, and other health related data (e.g. frailty, walking speed, ADL, etc.) were collected by research nurses. The results showed: 1) people in different health status had different patterns of paths linking “age stereotype” to “aging self-perceptions”; 2) people could modify one’s “age stereotypes” and “aging self-perceptions” to distinguish oneself from other old people; 3) “Negative Self-Perception of Aging (NSPA)” were significantly correlated with functional health, those who reported higher NSPA walk slower, reported poorer functional health, and less active; 4) “age stereotypes” did not had significant direct paths to link to functional health, but to link indirectly via NSPA; 5) those reported higher “positive self-perception of aging” had better quality of life on psychological and sociological domains.
The results of the thesis supported that “attitude toward aged and aging” did affect functional health and survival in Taiwanese older adults, and people will try to cope with “aging” while they grow old. These results might imply that clinical psychologist could play a crucial part in helping people to cope with their aging process. Clinical psychologist could help them to understand what they are facing, to choose proper optimal aging goals, and to modify one’s aging self perceptions in order to counter the effects of negative age stereotypes.
Subjects
Taiwanese older adults
age stereotype
aging self perception
optimal aging
functional health
Type
thesis
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