Analyses examine change in the age people "feel" ("felt age") and "would like to be" ("ideal age") (relative to current age) in middle and later life. Data are from 1,815 respondents in two waves (1995-96, 2004-06) of the Midlife in the United States Survey (MIDUS) who were age 40+ at Wave 1. In aggregate, people feel about the same amount younger…

Although daily social exchanges are important for well-being, it is unclear how different types of exchanges affect daily well-being, as well as which factors influence the way in which individuals react to their daily social encounters. The present study included a sample of 705 adults aged 31 to 91, and using Multilevel Modeling analyses…

Theory of mind (ToM) refers to humans' ability to recognize the existence of mental states, such as beliefs, emotions, and desires. The literature on ToM in aging and on the relationship between ToM and other cognitive functions, like executive functions, is not homogenous. The aim of the present study was to explore the course of ToM and to…

Two prominent theories of lifespan development, socioemotional selectivity theory and selection, optimization, and compensation theory, make similar predictions for differences in the goal representations of younger and older adults. Our purpose was to test whether the goals of younger and older adults differed in ways predicted by these two…

A person-environment approach was used to explore the relationship between community involvement and attitudes toward aging among middle-age and older lesbians and gay men. Specifically, this study investigated the relationships between participation in gay community activities, perceived control, and aging-related concerns among two…

The majority of our knowledge about eating disorders derives from adolescent and young adult samples; knowledge regarding disordered eating in middle and later adulthood is limited. We examined the associations among known predictors of eating disorders for younger adults in an age-diverse sample and within the context of psychological distress.…

Previous studies suggested that older adults are more likely to engage in heuristic decision-making than young adults. This study used eye tracking technique to examine young adults' and highly educated older adults' attention toward two types of decision-relevant information: heuristic cue vs. factual cues. Surprisingly, highly educated older…

Many studies conducted in the United States (U.S.) have documented a positivity effect in aging--a tendency for older adults to remember more positive than negative information in comparison to young adults. Despite this cognitive emotional benefit, U.S. adults still hold a more negative view of aging compared to adults in Asia. We hypothesized…

This study focused on the identification of conceptually meaningful groups of individuals based on their joint self-concept differentiation (SCD) and self-concept clarity (SCC) scores. Notably, we examined whether membership in different SCD-SCC groups differed by age and also was associated with differences in psychological well-being (PWB).…

Because of the dearth of available partners, older women looking to date may have to relax their dating standards to find a dating partner, perhaps accepting a life situation that is not what they had hoped for. However older women may be reluctant to sacrifice an often recently-gained lifestyle free of caregiving obligations. Older men, on the…

The purpose of this study was to explore the impact of age, historical change, and gender on perceptions of mental health and mental health services. Using multidimensional measures to assess such perceptions among older adults (1977, 1991, 2000), and younger adults (1991, 2000), we expected that older adults would have less positive mental health…

In two related studies, we examined flashbulb memories acquired from different points in the lifespan in younger and older adults. When asked to remember flashbulb memories from their lives, older adults were most likely to recall events from the reminiscence bump (Study 1A). In Study 1B, younger and older adults recalled 9/11 and a personal…

Socioemotional selectivity theory (Carstensen, 1995) posits a "positivity effect" in older adults, describing an increasing tendency to attend to, process, interpret, and remember events and others in life in a positive fashion as one ages. Drawing on personal construct theory, Viney (1993) observes increasing integration of constructions of self…

This study examined the effects of aging and education on participants' false memory for words that were not presented. Three age groups of participants with either a high or low education level were asked to study lists of semantically related words. Both age and education were found to affect veridical and false memory, as indicated in the…

After an oral free recall task, participants were interviewed about their memory. Despite reporting similar levels of perceived personal control over memory, older and young adults differed in the means in which they believed memory could be controlled. Older adults cited health and wellness practices and exercising memory, consistent with a "use…