Older Brain Really May Be a Wiser Brain The New York Times By SARA REISTAD-LONG Published: May 20, 2008 When older people can no longer remember names at a cocktail party, they tend to think that their brainpower is declining. But a growing number of studies suggest that this assumption is often wrong...

The authors tested the possibility that older adults show a positivity effect in decision making, by giving younger and older adults the opportunity to choose 1 of 4 products and by examining the participants' satisfaction with their choice. The authors considered whether requiring participants to...

John T. Cacioppo's groundbreaking research topples one of the pillars of modern medicine and psychology: the focus on the individual as the unit of inquiry. By employing brain scans, monitoring blood pressure, and analyzing immune function, he demonstrates the overpowering influence of social context...

This study examined the psychosocial correlates and psychometric properties of the Self-Assessed Wisdom Scale (SAWS) (Webster, 2003 a). Seventy-three men and 98 women ranging in age from 17-92 years (Mean age = 42.77) completed an expanded, 40-item version of the SAWS, the Loyola Generativity Scale,...

Narrative approaches in the field of aging are receiving increasing attention by theorists and practitioners alike. This article draws on recent thinking in narrative gerontology to look at three aspects of aging on which a narrative perspective can shed further light. In relation to the temporal aspects...

Although wisdom is thought to be a strong predictor for many attributes of aging well, the concept of wisdom still lacks a comprehensive, directly testable scale. Quantitative and qualitative interviews with a.sample of 180 older adults (age 52-plus) were conducted to develop a three-dimensional wisdom...

This study examines cross-cultural age-related patterns of two modes of wisdom : the analytical (i.e., Knowledge Database, Abstract Reasoning), and the synthetic (i.e., Reflective Understanding, Emotional Empathy, and Emotional Regulation). A total of 68 American and 68 Japanese community-dwelling adults...