Successful Aging

• Rowe & Khan's formulation of "successful aging"


  Distinguished between "usual/normal" and "successful" aging
• Limitations with "successful aging"?


  Cognitive & physical heterogeneity within “usual” aging

  “Normal” suggests no risk or harmlessness

  “Normal” aging suggest natural aging (ie. not modifiable)
• What does success look like in successful aging (R&W Model)?

  1. Avoiding disease & disability

  2. High cognitive & physical function

  3. Active engagement with life
• Criticisms of Rowe & Kahn's model

  • Low prevalence of successful aging

  Missing concepts

  Missing voices

  Assumptions & biases
• Low prevalence of successful aging

  11.9% using R&W's (rowe & khan) biomedical model (McLaughlin et al., 2010)

  20-33% using relaxed criteria for disease & disability

  About ⅕ to ⅓ of population are aging successfully
• Missing concepts/predictors


  • Spirituality

  Marital status & satisfaction

  Positive (not pathological) health

  Leisure activity

  Well-being & Quality of Life

  Personal fulfillment
• 82% reported positive adaptation, "I am able to adapt to change" and "I tend to bounce back after illness or hardship."
• 85% reported mastery/growth, "I am in control of my life" and "I can deal with whatever comes my way."
• Assumptions & biases


  The need to better capture subjective meanings of successful aging from diverse cultural perspectives.

  R&W model seems to be biased in western, white, middle class ppl and their conceptualizations of successful aging

  We have to think about other nationalities as well
• Broader critiques of Rowe & Khan's model

  Narrow focus on the individual's behaviors & attitudes

  Ignores social, economic, historical contexts of people's lives

  Individual (not the state's) responsibility for maintaining physical & cognitive function

  Less focus on the state's responsibility to:

  Increase social security

  Improve accessibility

  Improve 'health' conditions

  Perpetuates Ageism & Ableism (avoid disease + disability)
• Alternatives to Rowe & Khan's model

  • Resilience aging

  Harmonious aging

  Active aging

  New models embrace loss/decline and integrate qualities of spirituality, meaning and identity.
• Resilience aging


  Focus on patterns of positive adaptation in the context of significant risk or adversity

  Achievable by many regardless of social, cultural background, or physical/cognitive impairment challenege
• Harmonious aging


  Wisdom of handling opportunities and challenges

  Acknowledgment of the aging body, physical and functional changes, leads to a peaceful mind

  Interdependence amongst people
• Active aging (WHO)


  The process of optimizing opportunities for health, participation, and security in order to enhance quality of life as people age
• Society has shifted on what is acceptable → okay to have a disabled dancer
• Do our thoughts & beliefs about aging impact the process and experience of aging? What role does society play?
• Stereotype embodiment


  Proposes that stereotypes are embodied when their assimilation from the surrounding culture leads to self-definitions that, in turn, influence functioning and health.
• How does stereotype embodiment occur?

  Top-down: Stereotypes from culture, society, historical → Onto the individual Over time

  2. Exposed to stereotypes from young age → Continue to hear stereotypes across lifespan

  As we get older → beliefs impact how we live our lives (self-fulfilling prophecy)
• Research findings of stereotype embodiment

  
  

  Those with more positive self-perceptions of aging at baseline reported better functional health from 1977 to 1995, controlling for baseline functional health, self-rated health, age, gender, race, & SES

  
  

  Individuals aged 18-49 who had more negative age stereotypes at baseline were more likely to have a cardiovascular event over the next 38 years
• Age Friendly Cities


  Foster healthy and active ageing, age safely in a place that is right for them, be free from poverty, continue to develop personally, and contribute to their communities while retaining autonomy, health and dignity.
• Initiatives of Age Friendly Cities

  • How long you have to cross a street
  • Ramps to get to the curbParks with rubberized paths

  More frequent benches

  Frequency of bus stops

  Changes to property tax bylaws for seniors

  Zoning bylaws allowing seniors to live together

  Opportunities for social interactions

  Branding/messaging
• Steps to create Age Friendly Cities

  • Outdoor areas and public buildings are safe and accessible

  Housing is affordable, safe and well designed for seniors

  Roads and walkways are accessible & in good shape

  Public transportation is affordable and accessible

  Health and community support services are available

  Opportunities for seniors to be socially active exist

  Seniors can take part in volunteer, political and employment positions
• Communicative ecology model of successful aging (CEMSA)

  Their own ways of seeing, and talking about, themselves can influence the way older adults feel about aging and, ultimately, their actual ability to age successfully

  The higher their self‐efficacy, the more likely they will be able to age successfully
• Factors that promote "Successful Aging"

  • Positive psychology

  Life satisfaction

  Subjective well-being

  The paradox of well-being

  Social indicators

  Social indicator model of well-being

  Set-point perspective
• Positive psychology & subjective well-being

  Seeks to provide a greater understanding of the strengths and virtues that enable individuals and communities to thrive

  Life satisfaction is the overall assessment of an individual's feelings and attitudes about one's life at a particular point in time
• Social indicators & Social indicator model of well-being

  Objective measures of social and economic welfare

  These demographic and social structural variables account for individual differences in levels of well‐being
• Subjective well-being


  Individual's overall sense of happiness
• Approaches to explaining subjective well‐being in later adulthood

  • Social indicator model

  Paradox of well-being

  Set-point perspective
• Social indicator model


  Older adults have less and so should be unhappier
• Paradox of well-being


  Older adults are able to overcome objective circumstances
• Set-point perspective


  Personality determines happiness levels
• From a biopsychosocial perspective, it is clear that creativity in later life may reflect the physical changes that individuals experience as they age
• Socioeconomically and racially disadvantaged individuals have less opportunity for creativity
• Women are less likely to be listed as creative and productive at any age
• One‐fifth of African Americans who had achieved eminence in the minority reference works were not mentioned in any of the majority indices of eminence
• Planck hypothesis


  The tendency of peak scientific productivity to occur in early adulthood
• Creative potential


  The total number of works that a person could hypothetically produce in a life span with no upper limits
• Simonton's Model of Creative Productivity


  Creative potential + number of ideas + ability to turn ideas into products = creative output
• Creativity peaks at age 40, then begins to decline. Later bloomers peak at age 50, then decline.
• Equal odds rule


  Creative individuals who produce more works are more likely to produce one or more of high quality than those who produce fewer works.