scholarly journals Dyadic Successful Aging and the Limits of Agency

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 755-755
Author(s):  
Markus Klingel

Abstract With increasing life expectancy, late life has become a longer, crucial part of the individual and dyadic life course. New opportunities, tasks and decisions emerged. Successful aging norms emphasize agency and autonomy. This can be activating, but also alienating. With increasing constraints, agency is limited and ideals of autonomy become dysfunctional. This challenges also relationships. Aging, functional losses and approaching death threaten dyadic satisfaction and functionality. Potentially, successful aging norms could erode dyadic solidarity when needed the most: in late life. This mixed-methods longitudinal study combines interviews and questionnaires at three observations across five years. Its focus lies on change over time and findings at observation three. The sample consists of eight German couples (78-86 years old, 50-65 years married, high relationship satisfaction, white, urban). What does aging mean for individualized actors? How do aging couples negotiate, decide and act on aging, autonomy and death? How do successful aging norms modulate dyadic aging? Overall, actors have internalized successful aging and benefit by influencing their health positively. However, this has become ambivalent. Actors increasingly perceive their future as limited and beyond individual control. Acceptance of losses that challenge the self is difficult, autonomy ideals burdensome and death salient. As individual agency is constrained, the dyad is still a functional stronghold against aging. Yet, it has to adapt as well to – potentially differential - individual aging. Losses can and do threaten couples’ functional and emotional unity. Four patterns of self-dyad dynamics emerged and exemplify tensions between individualized and dyadic successful aging.

2021 ◽  
pp. 009365022199149
Author(s):  
Shan Xu ◽  
Zheng Wang

This study integrates the theory of multiple selves within the theoretical framework of dynamic motivational activation (DMA) to identify the dynamic patterns of multiple self-concepts (i.e., the potential self, the actual self) in multitasking (e.g., primary and secondary activities) in daily life. A three-week experience sampling study was conducted on college students. Dynamic panel modeling results suggest that the self-concepts are both sustaining and shifting in daily activities and media activities. Specifically, the potential and actual selves sustained themselves over time in primary and secondary activities, but they also shifted from one to another to achieve a balance in primary activities over time. Interestingly, secondary activities were not driven by the alternative self-concept in primary activities, but instead, by the emotional experiences of primary activities. Furthermore, the findings identified that multitasking to fulfill their actual self did not motivate people to re-prioritize their potential self later.


2018 ◽  
pp. 124-177
Author(s):  
Laura Kounine

This chapter deals with the role of the self and conscience in defending oneself against the charge of witchcraft. To add depth to intellectual concepts—and teleologies—of the self, we must understand how the individual self was understood, felt, and experienced. Particularly for the crime of witchcraft, the crux of the trial was premised on the moral question of what kind of person would commit such a crime. Those on trial for witchcraft in the Lutheran duchy of Württemberg invoked the idioms of ‘mind’, ‘conscience’, ‘heart’, or ‘self’ in constructing their defence. Through four case studies, ranging from 1565 to 1678, this chapter examines the different ways in which people could conceptualize their person, and shows that change over time in the ‘development’ of the modern self was not a uniform or directly linear pattern.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dylan M. Nielson ◽  
Francisco Pereira ◽  
Charles Y. Zheng ◽  
Nino Migineishvili ◽  
John A. Lee ◽  
...  

In order to obtain the sample sizes needed for robustly reproducible effects, it is often necessary to acquire data at multiple sites using different MRI scanners. This poses a challenge for investigators to account for the variance due to scanner, as balanced sampling is often not an option. Similarly, longitudinal studies must deal with known and unknown changes to scanner hardware and software over time. In this manuscript, we have explored scanner-related differences in the dataset recently released by the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) project, a multi-site, longitudinal study of children age 9-10. We demonstrate that scanner manufacturer, model, as well as the individual scanner itself, are detectable in the resting and task-based fMRI results of the ABCD dataset. We further demonstrate that these differences can be harmonized using an empirical Bayes approach known as ComBat. We argue that accounting for scanner variance, including even minor differences in scanner hardware or software, is crucial for any analysis.


1998 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 257-267
Author(s):  
Clare Palmer

AbstractAlfred North Whitehead's and Charles Hartshorne's process thinking presents a complex and sophisticated metaphysical underpinning for a theory of self and self-identity. Their construction of the self has significant implications for understanding of the (human) community and the natural environment. Process thinking, I argue, undercuts the idea of self unity; of self-continuity over time; and of self-differentiation from the world. When combined, these three elements mean that it is hard to separate the individual, personal self from the community and the natural world. I compare these implications from process thinking with what might seem similar implications from radical ecological philosophies. Although there are ethical and metaphysical differences between process thinkers and deep ecologists, both kinds of theory need to be treated with caution in application to our thinking about the environment.


2021 ◽  
pp. 174569162096410
Author(s):  
Julia M. Rohrer ◽  
Warren Tierney ◽  
Eric L. Uhlmann ◽  
Lisa M. DeBruine ◽  
Tom Heyman ◽  
...  

Science is often perceived to be a self-correcting enterprise. In principle, the assessment of scientific claims is supposed to proceed in a cumulative fashion, with the reigning theories of the day progressively approximating truth more accurately over time. In practice, however, cumulative self-correction tends to proceed less efficiently than one might naively suppose. Far from evaluating new evidence dispassionately and infallibly, individual scientists often cling stubbornly to prior findings. Here we explore the dynamics of scientific self-correction at an individual rather than collective level. In 13 written statements, researchers from diverse branches of psychology share why and how they have lost confidence in one of their own published findings. We qualitatively characterize these disclosures and explore their implications. A cross-disciplinary survey suggests that such loss-of-confidence sentiments are surprisingly common among members of the broader scientific population yet rarely become part of the public record. We argue that removing barriers to self-correction at the individual level is imperative if the scientific community as a whole is to achieve the ideal of efficient self-correction.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Federico Zannoni

In recent decades we have witnessed the disruptive rise of an ultraliberalism which, by enhancing the autonomy of the individual, has given the collective dimension a primarily instrumental connotation; the affirmation of the “self-centered man” (Bertin’s definition), that pursues the experience of the world above all on the level of “possession”, has intertwined with the crisis, especially among adults, in the practice of friendship, understood as a relationship of voluntary, free interdependence, which continues over time through manifestations of sharing, complicity, intimacy, affection and mutual assistance. The social isolation resulting from the pandemic event has led to the reconsideration of the importance of friendships and to the search for new opportunities for meeting, online or face to face (possibly respecting the current restrictive rules for the containment of the epidemic), in which “being together” is predominant over “doing something together”.


2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcus Schmücker

By pointing out different forms of pre-reflective consciousness and comparing them to the concepts of self in Advaita and Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta, it could be shown that both schools apply a kind of consciousness that corresponds to Frank’s concept of self-consciousness and self-knowledge. As demonstrated, the first form of pre-reflective consciousness complies with the advaitic teaching of an unchangeable eternity of consciousness, which is subjectless and understood as being without time and space, even as being omnipresent. It appears impossible to relate it to something else without it being objectified. The Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta school reinterprets the concept of pure consciousness and accepts it as objectifiable consciousness, which is now considered “knowledge”. At the same time it presupposes a kind of individual consciousness which is called “I”. Moreover, this school uses the argument that consciousness is unobjectifiable against the Advaitin to establish that objectifying does not imply the cessation of consciousness, that is, in their case the consciousness of the individual self. Rāmānuja thus theorises, a thesis continued by Veṅkaṭanātha, that knowledges (saṃvit) can be remembered over time because, first, they are based on a constant self, that is, a pre-reflective “I”-consciousness, and secondly, through this “knowledge”, they can be known again by referring to itself in another state (avasthā) than it earlier held. But what does this mean for the familiarity of (self‑)consciousness? Is it mediated? The self, the “I”-consciousness, is always in a new, changed state of knowledge. As far as self-luminosity is possible, even if the self can be objectified, it is possible to say, without negating consciousness, that it is immediately aware of being in a special state if this can be proven through different means of knowledge.


2010 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 57-65 ◽  
Author(s):  
Otto Bodi ◽  
Gerold Mikula ◽  
Bernhard Riederer

This study investigates the nature of the long-term effects among perceived justice in the division of domestic work, change in the division of domestic work, and relationship satisfaction in a two-wave, 3-year longitudinal study of 389 women from Austria, Germany, and Switzerland. Results suggest that long-term effects between perceived justice and relationship satisfaction are bidirectional. Initial relationship satisfaction predicted perceived justice 3 years later and initial perceived justice predicted relationship satisfaction 3 years later. But the effect of perceived justice on relationship satisfaction depended on how the division of work had changed over time. If women’s share of work increased over time, perceived justice at Time 1 predicted greater relationship dissatisfaction at Time 2, whereas if women’s share of work decreased over time, perceived justice at Time 1 predicted greater relationship satisfaction at Time 2.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Marie Rohrer ◽  
Warren Tierney ◽  
Eric Luis Uhlmann ◽  
Lisa Marie DeBruine ◽  
Tom Heyman ◽  
...  

Science is often perceived to be a self-correcting enterprise. In principle, the assessment of scientific claims is supposed to proceed in a cumulative fashion, with the reigning theories of the day progressively approximating truth more accurately over time. In practice, however, cumulative self-correction tends to proceed less efficiently than one might naively suppose. Far from evaluating new evidence dispassionately and infallibly, individual scientists often cling stubbornly to prior findings. Here we explore the dynamics of scientific self-correction at an individual rather than collective level. In thirteen written statements, researchers from diverse branches of psychology share why and how they have lost confidence in a published finding. We qualitatively characterize these disclosures and explore their implications. A cross-disciplinary survey suggests that such loss-of-confidence sentiments are surprisingly common among members of the broader scientific population, yet rarely become part of the public record. We argue that removing barriers to self-correction at the individual level is imperative if the scientific community as a whole is to achieve the ideal of efficient self-correction.


Author(s):  
Monika Coghen

The starting point for Polish Romantics was, as for many of their Western counterparts, the focus on the self. But personal existence was represented as a worthy sacrifice for the sake of the national cause. In the aftermath of the failure of the 1830 Uprising, pessimism, melancholy, and metaphysical and political rebellion were countered by messianic ideas of the émigré poets. Idealism, led to religious belief, whether Catholicism or less orthodox systems. The confrontation of the individual with history was therefore enacted on the metaphysical plane, and presented mainly in the dramatic form, which became the domineering genre in the post-1831 period. Through the deep belief in the ethical and social roles of poetry Polish Romantics played a crucial part in preserving the national identity of their readers, truly earning the status ofwieszcz, the poet-prophet.


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