Research on personality and aging has been limited by several factors, including nomethetic assumptions about traits; overreliance on morale scales as measures of adaptation; and the confounding of cohort, time of measurement and age effects. An idiographic approach, which focuses on traits that individuals subjectively feel as important, may help…

Retirement counseling offers assistance to the person who lacks either the knowledge or the skills to define or solve the problems that arise in this later stage of life. (Author)

Describes continuity theory, as emphasizing the interaction between individual characteristics and the social structure. Presents three propositions concerning social role restrictivness and maintenance in older adults. Considers psychological, sociological, physiological, and educational influences on elder's social behavior. (JAC)

This paper is concerned with adaptation through time and with life time as differentiated from calendar or historical time. Life time is that of socially defined time; thus the author examines the system of social expectations regarding age-appropriate behavior which requires adaptive behavior on the part of adults. (SJL)

This paper presents the "uses of the past" model of personality development, a model in which adult development transforms an individual's history into resources for meeting present demands. The components of the model are delineated in terms of how: (1) neither the past nor the present is fixed in its effects or its contribution to present…

This study investigated sibling interaction patterns in middle childhood as predictors of adjustment outcomes in males during adolescence and early adulthood using a social interactional perspective. It was theorized that negative interaction during middle childhood with siblings and parents would be the most powerful predictor of adjustment in…

Research suggests that primary control increases as humans develop from infancy through middle age and then decreases in old age. To minimize losses, individuals rely on cognitively based secondary control processes in middle and old age. Literature on adult control processes is reviewed. (SLD)