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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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The adaptiveness of selection, optimization and compensation as strategies of life management
— evidence from a preference study on proverbs | | Author(s) | Alexandra M Freund, Paul B Baltes |
| Journal title | Journals of Gerontology: Series B, Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, vol 57B, no 5, September 2002 |
| Pages | pp P426-P434 |
| Keywords | Cognitive processes ; Well being ; Life satisfaction ; Attitude ; United States of America. |
| Annotation | The model of selection, optimization and compensation (SOC model) posits these three fundamental processes of life management. In two studies, 64 younger (19-32 years) and 131 older (59-85 years) adults were asked to match proverbs to sentence stems indicative of life management situations. Of the proverbs, half reflected one component of SOC and half alternative, non-SOC life management strategies. SOC-related and alternative proverbs were matched on familiarity, understandability, and non-meaningfulness. Both younger and older adults chose proverbs reflecting SOC more frequently and faster than alternative proverbs. A further study ruled out that these results were due to an artefact resulting from a stronger, purely semantic relationship of the specific sentence stems with the SOC-related proverbs. Further studies with younger and older adults tested discriminate validity. In contrast with tasks involving long-term goal orientation and success, there were no preferences for SOC-related proverbs for life contexts involving relaxation or leisure. Taken together, these results indicate that individuals when asked to choose between alternative proverbs characterising ways of managing life prefer SOC-related proverbs. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-021107206 A |
| Classmark | DA: D:F:5HH: F:5HH: DP: 7T |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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