Perceptions of Ideal and Typical Middle and Old Age

1979 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy C. Sherman ◽  
Joel A. Gold

An investigation of attitudes toward typical and ideal old age was carried out with seventy-eight undergraduate students. Half of the participants responded to semantic differential scales for typical and ideal old age and half to middle age stimulus objects. The scales were analyzed in terms of three dimensions produced in previous research. No difference was found between the middle and old age conditions for the personal acceptability dimension but differences were found for both the autonomous-dependent and instrumental-ineffective dimensions. The old and middle age objects were rated alike at ideal but the old age object was rated less autonomous and less instrumental at typical.

1975 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth C. Thomas ◽  
Kaoru Yamamoto

Attitudes toward young, middle-age, and old persons were studied in 1000 children (grades 6, 8, 10, 12). Three newspaper photographs were presented to the children, who estimated the persons' ages and wrote stories about each photograph in his preferred order. Scores from a semantic differential which provided three factors, Evaluation, Affect, and Activity-Potency, were used in a three-way analyses of variance to analyze further children's attitudes. The overriding impression from these findings is that these school children do not share the allegedly general, negative attitude toward old age. The age estimates showed judgmental accuracy and were remarkably uniform in both central tendency and variation. The overall order of choice was young person, first; old person, second; and middle-age person, last.


1983 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-231 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary A. Luszcz

Attitudes toward the elderly were considered in a life-span context relative to adolescents and the middle-aged. These groups were chosen based on theorized commonalities linking adolescents and the elderly in contrast to the middle-aged. Undergraduate students used a semantic differential to rate the extent to which adjectives corresponded to their conceptions of ideal, real, and typical adolescents, middle-aged, and elderly people. Four subscales of Autonomy, Instrumentality, Acceptability, and Integration were assessed. When students considered their ideal conceptions of each age group, no age-related differences were evidenced on any dimensions. Further, across age, typical individuals were considered to be less acceptable and less well-integrated than people known by students. However, autonomy and instrumentality varied with age as well as the type of individuals being rated. Typical old people as well as old people known to students were viewed to be less instrumental than adolescents. These elderly people were also viewed as less instrumental than real but not typical middle-aged people. Adolescents and the elderly alike were seen as less autonomous than real or typical middle-aged people. Results were discussed in terms of Chellam's notion of symmetry that suggests that balance, likeness, and oppositeness each characterize relations among adolescents, the middle-aged, and the elderly.


10.26524/1312 ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 06-15
Author(s):  
Rajender Singh ◽  
Pradeep Kumar ◽  
Sonu Kumar ◽  
Prabal Pratap Singh

2009 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 445-472 ◽  
Author(s):  
KAZUTOSHI MIYAZAWA

AbstractIt has been argued whether a transfer policy for elderly people should be in kind or in cash. This paper presents a rationale to answer the question in an endogenous growth model with a two-way intrafamily transfer in middle age, education for the child as an inter-vivos transfer, and informal parental care in exchange for a bequest. We have two analytical results. First, a transfer in cash, such as a public pension, prevents economic growth because a strategic behavior concerning caregiving generates a disincentive effect on education. Second, a transfer in kind, such as public formal care, promotes economic growth because the valuation of the service generates an additional benefit of education, which dominates the disincentive effect. Our results show that old age support should be in kind rather than in cash in the context of economic growth and also welfare if bequests are strategic.


2021 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 143-159
Author(s):  
Józef Młyński

In an ageing society, over-60s’ problems take an important place in the social policy. The State should be prepared for various implications, both positive and negative, of the ageing of the population, and should treat the potential problems of citizens as a challenge and an opportunity for the development of social policy, and within its framework, the policy aimed at the senior citizens. The senior citizens, by all means, constitute an important age group. This type of policy should be focused on both early and late old age people, addressing their different needs and expectations. This article attempts to show the challenges and the role of social policy addressed to the seniors, both at the early and late old age, especially at the local community level. The impact of the article is analysed in the three dimensions described, i.e. a brief outline of the ageing of the population from a demographic perspective, social policy towards seniors at the early and late old age, the challenge the 60 and over pose to the local policy versus their resources.


1979 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 517-524 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gloria R. Leon ◽  
Brenda Gillum ◽  
Richard Gillum ◽  
Marshall Gouze

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Agnieszka Ćwirlej-Sozańska ◽  
Agnieszka Wiśniowska-Szurlej ◽  
Anna Wilmowska-Pietruszyńska ◽  
Bernard Sozański ◽  
Natalia Wołoszyn
Keyword(s):  
Old Age ◽  

Author(s):  
V. J. Knox ◽  
W.L. Gekoski

ABSTRACTIt has been suggested that an exaggeration of the target age effect is obtained when the same respondents judge multiple age groups rather than only one age group. In the present study each of 1200 undergraduates rated a young, middle-aged, or old target on the 32 bipolar adjective pairs of the Aging Semantic Differential (ASD; Rosencranz & McNevin, 1969). An additional 200 undergraduates rated all three target age groups on the ASD. The ASD was scored in terms of the three dimensions reported by its authors. In the isolated judgment condition young targets were rated highest on the Instrumental-Ineffective and Personal Acceptability-Unacceptability dimensions followed, in both cases, by middle-aged and then by old targets; on the Autonomous-Dependent dimension, middle-aged targets were rated higher than both young and old targets. The hypothesized exaggeration of the target age effect in the comparative judgment condition was obtained for the descriptive dimensions (Instrumental-Ineffective and Autonomous-Dependent) but not for the evaluative dimension (Personal Acceptability-Unacceptability) of the ASD. Possible explanations for why judgment context might affect descriptive but not evaluative assessments of target age groups are discussed.


Healthcare ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Moudatsou ◽  
Areti Stavropoulou ◽  
Anastas Philalithis ◽  
Sofia Koukouli

The current article is an integrative and analytical literature review on the concept and meaning of empathy in health and social care professionals. Empathy, i.e., the ability to understand the personal experience of the patient without bonding with them, constitutes an important communication skill for a health professional, one that includes three dimensions: the emotional, cognitive, and behavioral. It has been proven that health professionals with high levels of empathy operate more efficiently as to the fulfillment of their role in eliciting therapeutic change. The empathetic professional comprehends the needs of the health care users, as the latter feel safe to express the thoughts and problems that concern them. Although the importance of empathy is undeniable, a significantly high percentage of health professionals seem to find it difficult to adopt a model of empathetic communication in their everyday practice. Some of the factors that negatively influence the development of empathy are the high number of patients that professionals have to manage, the lack of adequate time, the focus on therapy within the existing academic culture, but also the lack of education in empathy. Developing empathetic skills should not only be the underlying objective in the teaching process of health and social care undergraduate students, but also the subject of the lifelong and continuous education of professionals.


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