Why is Aging Important to Social Psychology?
Convergence of Life-span Psychology and Social Psychology of Aging
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Chapter 2: Toward a Social Psychology of Aging
Social psychology is important to understanding aging as well. It is probably self-evident that just because we get old we do not stop thinking about the social world we live in and how we influence others and how others influence us. One factor that probably does not change with age is that we are always part of a social context, albeit that context may change. It is also important to understand that not only does the social context influence us but also we can influence the social context in important ways. For example, not only do important events affect us--such as world wars, the civil rights movement, or the rise of the internet--but also we affect society by how we individually and collectively think about these important issues.
Metaphors of the Thinker in the Social World:
People also strive for balanced relationships with others as a result of a need for consistency. For example, if you have a friend that you really like but one of your other friends does not like this person, then there is an imbalance in the relationship. You are thus motivated to restore this imbalance by adjusting your relationship in some way with the other two people.
Naïve Scientist (1970s-1980s)
This metaphor views the person as one who gathers data about the social world and comes to the most logical decision in much the same way a scientists goes about testing hypotheses. We gather data about the world with the goal of determining the cause of behavior. This model assumes that people can engage in this analysis of the social world in a rational way.
Cognitive Miser (1980s-1990s)
This metaphor portrays people as being limited in their capacity to process all information about the world. Thus, we take short cuts in our decision making. These short cuts, or rules of thumb, are called heuristics. For example, if we wish to learn if a restaurant is good we could read all the restaurant guides and compare information about this restaurant to others. However, we may not have the time, inclination, or capacity to keep all of the information straight. So, we might instead use a simple rule of thumb such as looking at the number of cars in the parking lot. Another rule of thumb that we use to determine if a decision or choice or viewpoint is correct is to get consensus from others. This heuristic is based on the idea that consensus (i.e., "if most people believe it") implies correctness (i.e., "then it must be true"). The use of heuristics can result in accurate judgments or can result in biases and errors in our judgment.
Motivated Tactician (1990s--)
This metaphor assumes that the
person
has multiple strategies available to make decisions about the world and
that the person chooses a strategy based on his or her goals, motives,
or needs. In some ways we act as an intuitive politician. That is, our
goal is to maintain the positive regard of important people
(constituencies)
to whom we feel accountable. As the views of those important people
shift
so do our strategies.
Investigates Important and Relevant Issues
Social psychology investigates a wide range
of issues that have relevance as we age.
Another area investigates the use of prosthetic devices. Important questions that social psychology can address are: Why do some older adults with a hearing impairment wear hearing aids and others do not? Does a theory such as self-presentation explain why some do not wear hearing aids?
The environment at the institutional level can be investigated by looking at how common areas are arranged that are conducive to quality social interactions. Social psychology can improve interactions in nursing homes, senior centers, or adult day care by understanding the variables that affect how people congregate and form relationships.
Why is Aging Important to Social Psychology?
The study of aging has important implications for social psychology. The social psychology of aging can benefit greatly by understanding when, if, and how age influences our interactions with others in a social world. For example, we can investigate period effects on behavior. When we investigate period effects we look at those historical events or changes in society (e.g., the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War) that affect people's attitudes and behavior.
We can also look at cohort effects. A cohort is a group of people who were born at the same historical period in time and will travel through time together into old age. Political views, attitudes about the roles of men and women, educational differences, historical events (e.g., the depression, the Vietnam War, environmental concerns) can be investigated by looking at cohorts. Important intergenerational differences in attitude, belief, and behavior between young and old--two different cohorts--can possibly be understood by studying cohorts.
Critiques of Social Psychology
Although social psychology can contribute greatly to understanding aging, the field in the last 50 years has come to increasingly rely on college undergraduates as the primary participant population for research. This was not the case in the early history of social psychology. Researchers conducted important investigations on stereotyping, relationships, and personality using a wide variety of people as research participants such as residents of housing projects, workers, and voters. After the 1960s, the number of studies that primarily used college students rose dramatically (Sears, 1987).
Sears (1987) outlines why the trend occurred toward using college undergraduates as participants in social psychological studies:
A change in the focus of the field
Prior to 1960, social psychologists focused on social issues such as depression, war, and prejudice. Topics that Sears (1987) points out could be researched in real life. Social psychology, possibly as a reaction to behaviorism in the 1950's, became increasingly concerned with scientific respectability. This respectability, so it was thought, could only be achieved in the laboratory. In order for the field to become more scientific, it required a "captive" population of experimental subjects that was easily attainable (i.e., the typical college sophomore).
Social psychology becomes popular
Social psychology became a popular undergraduate course in the 1960s attracting a large number of students. Not only were students flocking to these courses but also they became an increasingly larger subject pool from which to sample.
Publish or perish
Sears points out that many universities began to place a strong emphasis on research. This emphasis required a certain amount of scholarly activity on the part of the faculty in the way of published research. As research began to weigh in the promotion and tenure process it became necessary to access a plentiful and easily attainable subject pool.
Below is a Table based on Sears (1987) analysis of the percentage of undergraduate participants used in articles published in the major social psychological journals.
TABLE 1
Subject Population in Social Psychologists' 1985
Journal
Articles.
| Subjects | JPSP Attitudes and Social Cognition | JPSP Interpersonal Relationships and Group Processes | PSPB | JESP | Total |
| American
Undergraduates |
81% | 58% | 79% | 82% | 74% |
| Other Students | 8% | 9% | 6% | 12% | 8% |
| Adults | 11% | 32% | 16% | 6% | 17% |
Table adapted from Sears (1987;
JPSP
= Journal of Personality and Social Psychology; PSPB = Personality and
Social Psychology Bulleting; JESP = Journal of Experimental Social
Psychology).
This trend toward the use of college undergraduates has led some to question the external validity of studies in social psychology (i.e., do the findings generalize to other groups of people other than the typical college student?). Also, there is a growing concern that findings in the laboratory may not pattern what occurs in real life (i.e., they may not exhibit ecological validity).
Other reasons why social psychology has ignored aging is grounded in some of its most basic assumptions and methodology (see Abeles, 1987; Blank, 1982):
Social Psychology is transituational and nondevelopmental
It has long been assumed that social psychological phenomena (e.g., obedience, attitude stability and change, persuasion) are largely stable over situations, time, and age. That is, any phenomena or demonstrated behavior is considered to be the same for most people.
Social Psychology relies heavily on cross sectional designs
In the next chapter we will explore in more detail the differences between cross-sectional and longitudinal designs. Briefly, cross-sectional designs (i.e., designs that compare two or more groups) can only tell us about the differences between those two groups. For example, if we compare a younger to an older sample on their scores from an intelligence test and find that the younger sample performs better, all we can say is that there are differences between the two groups and this finding does not reflect any real developmental changes. On the other hand, a longitudinal design (i.e., one that follows a person or a group of people over a period of time) addresses changes in that person or group. For example, a longitudinal design can tell us if intelligence changes (i.e., gets better or worse) as people age.
However, as we will see, the use
of
cross-sectional designs can provide us with valuable information
provided
that we are aware of what these data actually tell us.
Critiques of Life-span Development and Aging
Criticisms have been leveled at the aging area as well. One critique of the study of aging is that it investigates the phenomenon of aging using a narrow field. Just as social psychology has been criticized for primarily focusing on one population (e.g., the college sophomore) aging research has been criticized for focusing primarily on the later part of the life span (e.g., old age). Gerontology for example, focuses on the later part of the life span; whereas Geriatrics is a branch of medicine that focuses on the study and treatment of disease in the older person. It has become increasingly clear that to understand the interplay between aging and social psychology one must understand the entire physiological, biological, social, historical, and cultural milieu in which the person is embedded.
Linda George (1995) offers several other critiques. One critique is that aging research does not focus on theory. What she means is that aging research does test hypotheses and conceptual models. What aging research has failed to do is to investigate grand theories in the way early research in sociology investigated structural functionalism, symbolic interactionism, or conflict theory. Social psychology also has moved away from grand theories such as Field Theory and focuses more on specific conceptual models or views (e.g., social cognition). The cost of moving away from these larger, more unifying theories is that people begin to get a sense that knowledge of aging is fragmented and focuses on trivial issues.
A second critique is that researchers in aging fail to appreciate the role of historical changes in understanding aging. George points out that very little research has investigated cohort and period effects in important issues such as labor force experiences or the relationship between family composition and health care utilization.
A third critique is that researchers in aging pay too little attention to the interrelationship between social change and cultural meaning. For example the cultural meaning people ascribe to concepts such as retirement and family evolve over time and reflect changes in the social structure.
A fourth critique is that aging research has failed in becoming multidisciplinary. It is clear that aging has relevance to other disciplines such as political science, computer science, psychology, and biology, just to name a few. Unless aging research becomes more multidisciplinary by understanding what other disciplines have to offer and what aging research offers to other disciplines, research in this field may continue to be characterized has having little relevance to the real world.
Convergence of Life-span Psychology and Social Psychology of Aging
It is becoming increasingly important to understand that we undergo a process of development that begins before birth and ends at death and that development is linked to a life-span and social psychological approach to understanding human beings (i.e., we develop and grow older in a social context). Abeles (1987), for example, summarized four central premises in a perspective that looks at development throughout the life-course:
Development is a lifelong process
We develop and change throughout our lives. These changes may be quantitative. That is, we may change in level of intelligence or physical activity. These changes may also be qualitative. For example, we may become more wise, happy, or emotionally stable.
Development is multidimentional and multidirectional
Changes may occur at different rates, may have different times of on-onset, or differ in duration. Also, factors that might be important to us such as intelligence, relationships, attitudes, or wisdom may not be unidimensional constructs. That is, they can be characterized along a number of dimensions (e.g., crystallized versus fluid intelligence), some of which improve, decline, or stay the same as we age.
Development is multidetermined
Aging is a biological, psychological, and social phenomenon. These variables interact in complex ways.
Thus, we can see that aging research and social psychology have long neglected each other primarily as a result of their own respective histories. As a result of integrating social psychology and aging we will attain a greater understanding of both areas than that which could be attained by investigating these areas in isolation.
References
Abeles, R. P. (1987). Life-span perspectives in social psychology. Ronald P. Abeles (Ed.). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Blank, T. O. (1982). A social psychology of developing adults. New York, NY: Wiley.
Fiske, S. T. & Taylor, S. E. (1984). Social Cognition. New York, NY: Random House.
Fiske, S. T. & Taylor, S. E. (1991). Social Cognition. New York, NY: Random House.
George, L. K. (1995). The last half-century of aging research--and thoughts for the future. Journal of Gerontolgy: Social Sciences, 50B, 81-83.
Hatfield, E., Walster, G. W., & Berscheid, E. (1978). Equity: Theory and research. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.
Myers, D. G. (1999). Social Psychology (6th edition). Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill.
Sears, D. O. (1987). Implications of the life-span approach for research on attitudes and social cognition. In R. P. Abeles (Ed.), Life-span perspectives and social psychology. (pp. 17-60).
Sternberg, R.
J.
& Barnes, M. L. (1988). The psychology of love. New Haven,
CT:
Yale University Press.
http://www.socialpsychology.org/
http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PA-97-065.html
http://www.apa.org/monitor/jan00/