Life span developmental theories suggest that as individuals age, they accumulate knowledge about how to deploy emotion regulation (ER) strategies effectively and learn how to match their ER strategy use with changes in situational demands. Using an event-contingent experience sampling design wherein 150 adults Age 18 to 89 years reported on…

Happiness is an important indicator of well-being, and little is known about how it changes in the early adult years. We examined trajectories of happiness from early adulthood to midlife in 2 Canadian longitudinal samples: high school seniors followed from ages 18-43 and university seniors followed from ages 23-37. Happiness increased into the…

Compared young (aged 18-25) and other adults on characteristics of suicide, examining unbearable psychological pain, interpersonal relations, rejection-aggression, inability to adjust, indirect expressions, identification-egression, ego, and cognitive constriction. Found that young adults' suicides did differ psychologically in a number of…

Prompted by the lack of information about the post-parental, pre-retirement generation, this study identified the nature of stress in the lives of a stratified cluster sample of 113 men and women who were 45 through 64 years of age. In semi-structured, in-depth interviews with experienced M.S.W. social workers, subjects identified the stressful…

There is a common perception that stresses tend to increase and accumulate with age, but there have been no definitive studies of differences in perceived life stress among different age groups. To study these differences, a quasi-random sample of 215 adults completed a 41 item life-stressor questionnaire, modified from the Paykel (1971) and…

Age-related change in manifest dream content was assessed in dreams recalled from REM sleep by (N=58) men aged (27-64), and in dreams recalled from sleep at home. Evidence indicated a small age-related decline in dream distortion and family-related content. (Author)

Piaget's egocentrism and Witkin's psychological differentiation are important constructs in theories of cognitive development. A comparison of these concepts could lead to an increased understanding of cognitive development in the older adult. In a test of Witkin's revised model of psychological differentiation, the Portable Rod and Frame Test…

This paper explores the developmental changes in meaning and purpose across the life course. Thirty males and females at the developmental stages of young adulthood (16-29 years), early middle-age (30-49 years), late middle-age (50-64 years), young-old (65-74 years) and old-old (75+ years) completed the Reker and Peacock (1981) Life Attitude…

Students of human development increasingly recognize that chronological age is not necessarily the best and certainly not the only measure of an individual's "age." The present study is an examination of the attitudinal correlates of subjective age identification among the younger adults in a nationally representative sample of the United States…

Research has begun to define the older adult population, not as a homogeneous sample, but as at least two groups with different concerns. To determine the factors contributing to retirement satisfaction, two groups of retirees, i.e., young-olds, aged 75 and under (N=49) and old-olds, over age 75 (N=49), completed the Individual Status Assessment…

Used a national probability sample of adults (N=3,536) to examine the effect of social interaction on psychological well-being across stages of adulthood. Determined quality of social interaction measured by satisfaction with family life and friendship related positively to well-being of adults in all age groups. (Author/TE)

Discusses the nature and importance of social skills for the elderly, including social skills deficits and psychological disorders related to aging, in five papers presented as part of a Symposium on Social Skills at the XII International Congress of Gerontology, Hamburg, July 1981. (JAC)