Journal of Adult Development最新文献

Interpersonal escalating commitment is an individual’s continued investment in a social partner regardless of the receiver’s negative feedback. It reflects the effort that people devote into maintaining and managing interpersonal relationships. This study focused on the effect of relationship closeness on interpersonal escalating commitment among older and younger adults and the mediating role of emotional experiences. We performed a 2 (relationship closeness: close/distant) × 2 (age group: younger adults/older adults) mixed design. Forty-eight older adults (aged 60–82) and forty-nine younger adults (aged 18–28) were enrolled in this study. Participants completed eight interpersonal escalating commitment tasks that were derived from real-life situations. Participants’ final and average tendency to escalate commitment and emotional experiences was recorded. The within-subject mediation analysis results indicated that older adults showed a higher tendency to escalate commitment in close relationships through the mediation of positive emotional experiences; younger adults did not exhibit excessive interpersonal escalating commitment even though their final tendency to invest in distant relationships was relatively higher than in close relationships. Our findings revealed an age difference in the effect of relationship closeness on interpersonal escalating commitment and the driving mechanism of emotional experiences among older adults. It allowed us to understand the reasoning behind people’s seemingly irrational interpersonal investments from a perspective of lifespan motivation.

An abundance of research documents that daily negative events are linked to short- and long-term health outcomes across adulthood. One key resource that is less studied in potentially mitigating the impact of daily negative events is neighborhood context. Up to this point, much of the research has included social characteristics of neighborhood context, whereas less is known regarding economic and physical characteristics. This study explores whether and to what extent social, economic, and physical neighborhood characteristics moderate the impact of daily negative and positive events on daily well-being as measured by daily levels of positive and negative affect. We use data from a sample of participants in midlife (n = 191, ages 40–65) who completed a daily survey for 30 consecutive days. Multilevel models showed that daily negative events were associated with poorer daily well-being and daily positive events were predictive of higher daily well-being. Living in a neighborhood with more income inequality was associated with stronger declines in daily well-being on days when individuals experienced a negative event. Neighborhood greenness was associated with reporting better well-being on days when a positive event occurred. The findings suggest that the neighborhood context can strengthen or mitigate changes in daily well-being when negative and positive events occur. The discussion elaborates on how the findings can inform interventions aimed at lessening the consequences of daily negative events and elucidates future research aimed at exploring potential mechanisms underlying the associations found.

Dual tasking refers to the ability to perform two concurrent tasks. Using the psychological refractory period (PRP) paradigm, two experiments examined whether providing a prompt that facilitated proactive control could benefit dual-task performance among younger and older adults. In Experiment 1, difficulty-related prompt words (“difficult,” “easy,” or null) were presented before easier dual tasks with a longer stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) of 800 ms or harder tasks with a shorter SOA of 100 ms. Experiment 2 extended the investigation by presenting these prompts (“difficult” or “easy”) before dual tasks with a fixed SOA of 150 ms. It also examined the moderating effects of actual task difficulty by manipulating task congruency. Both experiments suggested that proactive control triggered by difficulty-related prompts facilitated dual-task performance in both age groups. Notably, prompts benefited younger adults’ dual-task performance only when the actual task difficulty was relatively higher, but they benefited older adults’ dual-task performance regardless of the actual task difficulty. These findings contribute to our understanding of proactive control and the different effects of prompts on cognitive performance among younger and older adults.

Overprotective parenting refers to parents’ provision of developmentally inappropriate protection and is associated with dysfunctional developmental processes and outcomes in adolescence and emerging adulthood. In the present study, we examined whether perceived overprotective parenting is potentially associated with identity synthesis and identity confusion, as the development of a coherent sense of identity is conceived as one of the primary goals of adolescence and emerging adulthood. Thereby, we also tested whether developmentally regulatory strategies of goal engagement and disengagement are intervening variables in the association between overprotective parenting and identity. Participants were 318 Georgian emerging adults (M_age = 23.41, 58% female). Path analyses indicated that perceived overprotective parenting was directly associated with less identity synthesis and more identity confusion. It was found that overprotection was unrelated to goal engagement, but was associated with more goal disengagement. Goal engagement, in turn, was positively associated with identity synthesis and negatively associated with identity confusion, whereas goal disengagement was positively associated with identity confusion. These results suggest that overprotective parenting creates a family context that is negatively associated with the successful resolution of the identity formation task. Goal disengagement, a relatively passive, avoidant developmental strategy, particularly played an intervening role in this association between overprotection and identity confusion.

Abstract

During the transition from infancy to preschool years, children develop controlling-caregiving and controlling-punitive attachments, in addition to continuing to show disorganized behaviors, as part of a larger disorganized attachment spectrum. Despite advances in understanding disorganization in young adulthood, little is known about the controlling patterns and their relations to psychological health. This is likely due to a scarcity of well-validated and cost-effective measures assessing all three disorganized patterns in young adulthood. The Childhood Disorganization and Role Reversal Scale (CDRR) addresses this need by assessing dimensions of disorganization and role reversal, such as hostility, child affective caregiving, and child punitiveness, in addition to appropriate parent–child boundaries. Since the CDRR is a recent measure, this study aimed to further validate it by (a) evaluating whether its factor structure replicates in a university student sample (N = 286, M(SD) = 19.3(1.6); 74.48% female) and (b) assessing its construct validity through associations with conceptually relevant constructs such as childhood adversity, internalizing problems (depression and anxiety), and subjective well-being (happiness, life satisfaction, and meaning in life). Confirmatory factor analyses provided evidence for the original four-factor structure CDRR with mothers (Disorganized/Punitive, Affective Caregiving, Mutual Hostility, Appropriate Boundaries) and fathers (Disorganized, Affective Caregiving, Punitive, Appropriate Boundaries). Associations with childhood adversity, internalizing problems, and subjective well-being were in the expected directions. Overall, the results provide additional evidence for the validity of the CDRR and the importance of evaluating disorganized and controlling attachments in young adulthood.

Abstract

Adulthood has traditionally been defined by the attainment of socio-demographic milestones such as career, marriage, and parenthood, but these milestones are increasingly delayed or have become inaccessible for young people today. As a result, young people are likely to experience a discrepancy between their expectations for and their actual reality of adulthood, which can negatively affect their well-being and psychological development. To systematically study contemporary definitions of and attitudes towards adulthood, we assessed a sample of 722 UK adults with an age range from 18 to 77 years on: (a) subjective adult status, or the extent to which people feel like adults; (b) attitudes towards adulthood, or whether people think adulthood is a positive time of life; and (c) the characteristics that people use to define adulthood today. We found that most participants felt adult and had positive attitudes towards adulthood. Our participants defined adulthood predominantly through psychological characteristics, for example “Accepting responsibility for the consequences of my actions” (endorsed by 80% of the sample), rather than by socio-demographic milestones which were endorsed by only 22–40% of participants. Both subjective adult status and attitudes towards adulthood were significantly associated with older age and the attainment of the socio-demographic milestones of marriage and parenthood. Regression analyses revealed that having a positive attitude towards adulthood was the strongest psychological predictor of subjective adult status, accounting for 10% of the variance. This suggests that fostering positive attitudes towards adulthood may help improving the well-being of contemporary adults.

College life involves navigating different educational and career development options, as well as social relationships. The pressure to “fit in” can be stressful and involve the fear of missing out (FOMO) on fun, social events. The college environment is especially challenging for those who experience social anxiety – the fear of being rejected and humiliated in social encounters. One factor that could be related to social difficulties in college students is helicopter parenting – a distinct parenting style characterized by parental over-involvement and over-control, which has been shown to be harmful to college students’ development. Given that college students experience helicopter parenting, FOMO, and social anxiety simultaneously, we examined how these experiences were associated with one another, as well as their stability and change across time. We expected helicopter parenting to be related to college students’ FOMO and social anxiety. Using a 12-week longitudinal design with a sample of 282 college students, we employed an interrelated latent growth curve to determine the associations between changes in helicopter parenting, FOMO, and social anxiety. The results showed that the levels of FOMO decreased over time, and a slower decrease in helicopter parenting was associated with a slower decrease in FOMO. In addition, decreases in social anxiety were associated with decreases in helicopter parenting and FOMO. Implications for practice are discussed.

The current study uses socioemotional selectivity theory (SST; Carstensen in Psychology and Aging. 7(3):331–338,1992,10.1037/0882-7974.7.3.331) as a framework to examine the experiences of older adults during COVID-19 in Aotearoa/New Zealand. SST posits that when time horizons are perceived as limited—such as with increasing age, or during times of medical uncertainty—people selectively focus on spending time with emotionally close others and in personally fulfilling activities. This may be the case particularly when uncertainty is experienced by older people. Aotearoa/New Zealand instigated an elimination strategy early in the pandemic (prior to widespread vaccine availability), employing a series of lockdowns that further challenged older adults’ perceptions of future horizons, their ability to maintain social connections with loved ones, and engagement in pleasurable activities. This study used thematic analysis to analyze existing qualitative COVID-19-related data drawn from the experiences of 510 older adults who participated in the 2021 Health, Work, and Retirement study (HWR). Participants ranged in age from 56 to 87 (M_age = 69.73); 15.9% identified as Māori, and 76.2% identified as female. Two broad themes were revealed: Social Connection and Anticipating the Future. Although most participants expressed comparatively more positive than negative experiences, some also expressed frustration and anxiety about health directive-related divisions in relationships, and the inability to share in important life events (such as weddings, births, and funerals). Findings highlight the complex impact of COVID-19 on older adults’ perceptions of time horizons, and the opportunities presented by the pandemic for reassessment of social relationships and activities.

Cognitive fatigue arises after a long-lasting task, as attested by increases in reaction times (RTs). However, most studies have focused on young adults. Therefore, we investigated cognitive fatigue through changes in RT distributions in three age groups—young, middle-aged, and older adults—during a 160-min Stroop task. Task duration was divided into four blocks and the ex-Gaussian parameters (μ, σ, τ) were extracted from individual RT distributions in each time block for each item type. The results showed a significant Group effect on μ. Young adults had smaller μ values than the other two groups, meaning that middle-aged and older people performed the whole task slower than young adults. By contrast, τ showed no Group effect but increased with Time-on-Task in middle-aged people. Older adults did not show τ increase with Time-on-Task, which echoes studies showing some resistance to task monotony in this population. Globally, our results showed dissociated age and Time-on-Task effect on the ex-Gaussian parameters, confirming the relevance of this approach in the cognitive fatigue domain. We proposed here that cognitive fatigue affects only the decision component of response production, and that midlife may be a life stage with high sensitivity to cognitive fatigue.

This research identified college students’ definitions of independence as well as topics they wish parents had discussed with them prior to college. Applying the theory of emerging adulthood to understand college students’ construal of independence, participants included 117 emerging adults, aged 18–25. Utilizing inductive coding to categorize participants’ open-ended responses from an online questionnaire, most emerging adults conceptualized independence in terms of self-reliance or freedom, and this was examined through the lens of social construction theory. The majority reported they felt their parents communicated what was necessary regarding independence with them before college. For those who did not, however, life skills and expectations were two of the topics students most wished parents would have communicated prior to college. Implications and suggestions are provided.