CHAPTER 14

Successful Aging and Creativity

Lecture guidelines

As mentioned in the last chapter, the end of the course covers successful aging rather than death and dying. This allows the instructor to send the students out of the course with an upbeat feeling about what they have to look forward to in the rest of their lives. The topic of successful aging has existed for some years within gerontology, but it has been given recent impetus by the Positive Psychology movement and the emphasis on optimism that is beginning to pervade the field. The job of ending the course on this topic is made much easier by this recent shift in emphasis, as in the past there was not much data from which to draw. As is evident from the chapter, the research on subjective well-being, successful aging, and even more recently successful cognitive aging provides a wealth of riches in this area. Moreover, the instructor can delve as much as desired into the material on creativity in later life by incorporating the works of great artists, musicians, and literary geniuses who continued to produce well into their eighties.

Videos and films

Instructors will find many possible sources for this lecture, including documentaries on amazing older adults as well as movies that provide a positive image of old age. There are also any number of documentaries, and YouTube clips about remarkable older adults. In terms of movies, there are again ample choices available. One particularly good movie that is available on video is “Young at Heart” http://www.youngatheartchorus.com/.

There are videos available on Rembrandt’s self-portraits on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_H71aiz290)

Also a biography of Picasso that includes his later years

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3k1lUBoBBIc

There are also many other possibilities for illustrating the "old age style," through the arts ranging from the above examples to contemporary musicians and entertainers. Putting together a slide show with your own preferences can help you end the course with a grand fireworks finale- a wonderful ending to what students will certainly have found to be a fascinating and worthwhile course.

Discussion questions

What is successful aging?

What do you think is involved in successful aging?

What successful agers do you know in your own life? Why do you consider them successful?

How would you rate your subjective well-being? Do you think it varies from day to day? What factors cause it to vary?

Do you think that people can actively construe their lives in a positive way even if their objective circumstances are negative? How?

How would you define your own campus and community in terms of the age friendly principles? How could these become more age friendly?

What examples from CEMSA can you cite from your own experiences with older adults?

Creativity and aging

What is the meaning of lastingness?

What examples can you think of that fit with the idea of “Old Age Style”?

How would you distinguish creativity with a “mini-C” to eminent creativity? What examples can you come up with from your life of creative older individuals?

Successful aging: Final perspectives

How is productivity measured in "ordinary" people at the end of life?

What can we learn from successful agers?

Multiple choice questions

AgeFeed

Successful ager criteria

As shown in AgeFeed, which of the following is a criterion for being a successful ager?

1. Try to look as young as possible
2. Receive and offer social support
3. Believe in aging-related stereotypes
4. Live in one’s own home

Successful ager criteria

As shown in AgeFeed, which of the following is a criterion for being a successful ager?

1. Having adequate financial resources
2. Being free of chronic diseases
3. Focusing on positive past achievements
4. Downsizing one’s home

What is successful aging?

WHO Model

Unlike the Rowe and Kahn model of successful aging, the WHO active ageing model takes into account:

1. presence of disability.
2. marital status.
3. feelings of well-being
4. cultural attitudes toward aging.

Happiness

Measures of successful aging that assess the emotions of older adults rather than how they think about their lives would include self-ratings of:

1. overall happiness.
2. life satisfaction.
3. subjective health.
4. relationships with others.

Paradox of well-being

According to the _____________________, it is surprising that older adults are able to maintain high levels of well-being than would be suggested by their actual situations in life.

1. social indicator model
2. paradox of well-being
3. active ageing hexagon
4. simple adaptation model

Social indicator

Which of the following factors would be considered a “social indicator” in research on age and subjective well-being?

1. satisfaction with friends
2. economic security
3. geographic location
4. interest in the arts

Social indicator

An older adult who is living on a tight income and has to economize on the essentials of daily living should, according to the _______________, also have low levels of happiness and life satisfaction.

1. paradox of well-being
2. social indicator model
3. demographic hypothesis
4. set point perspective

Feeling needed

Difficulty:

Approximately ___% of older adults in a national survey of happiness reported feeling that others didn’t need them.

1. 34
2. 9
3. 21
4. 45

Communicative ecology model

Difficulty:

The communicative ecology model of successful aging (CEMSA) proposes that those older adults who age successfully avoid:

1. engaging with younger adults.
2. thinking of themselves as youthful.
3. temptations to buy anti-aging products.
4. making extensive plans for the future.

Blind variation and selective retention theory

Throwing out a number of ideas to see which will prove most useful, known as the “blind variation and selective retention” theory, is more simply known as the:

1. CEMSA principle.
2. hit rate.
3. equal odds rule.
4. elaboration rate.

Longevity and productivity

Increases in longevity may contribute to the greater productivity of older creative individuals by allowing them more:

1. financial stability.
2. interaction with their children.
3. time to be by themselves.
4. resources for collaboration.

Old age style

The works of older artists such as Chester French, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Michelangelo show such qualities as:

1. greater attention to detail rather than shape and form.
2. lack of willingness to engage in self-criticism.
3. emphasis on their lost youth.
4. focus on emotional impact rather than detail.

Rowe and Kahn critics

Critics of the Rowe and Kahn model of successful aging note that it fails to take into account:

1. presence of chronic disease.
2. engagement with life.
3. subjective well-being.
4. cognitive capacity.

WHO Active Ageing

The original World Health Organization model of Active Ageing includes which key component?

1. genetic inheritance
2. engagement with life
3. body mass index
4. physical environment

WHO Active and Healthy Ageing

Active and healthy ageing, as proposed by the World Health Organization, takes into account which set of influences on the individual throughout life?

1. genetics
2. cognition
3. education
4. culture

Active and healthy ageing

The World Health Organization’s concept of Active and Healthy Ageing incorporates which feature not included in the Rowe and Kahn model of successful aging?

1. physical health
2. cognitive functioning
3. social engagement
4. diversity

SHARE

The Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) study revealed that _____% of the sample of nearly 53,000 individuals 50 and older in 14 countries met the WHO criteria of Active and Healthy Aging.

1. 38
2. 57
3. 29
4. 11

SHARE

Functioning in which area was included in the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) as a component of active and healthy ageing?

1. lower scores on measures of loneliness
2. reduced amount of white matter
3. improved connectivity in the default network
4. less cortical thickness

Superagers

As shown by research on superagers, ____________ in the brain seems to predict successful cognitive aging.

1. lower levels of inflammatory responses
2. reduced amount of white matter
3. improved connectivity in the default network
4. less cortical thickness

Super agers

Individuals over the age of 80 with cognitive performance comparable to or better than middle-aged adults are known as:

1. superagers
2. active agers
3. supercentenarians
4. oldest-old

White matter and successful cognitive aging

Higher density of __________ in the brain is known to be associated with successful cognitive aging.

capillaries

white matter

beta amyloid

fatty cells

Successful cognitive aging

People who are high in successful cognitive aging have been shown to have greater ability in which component of memory?

1. visuospatial processing
2. encoding speed
3. serial processing
4. self-efficacy

Set point perspective

The set point perspective to successful aging proposes that the greatest influence on happiness levels in older adults is:

1. income
2. health
3. personality
4. education

WHO Age Friendly Environment

One of the chief goals of the World Health Organization’s Age Friendly Environment initiative is to:

combat ageism.

develop age-segregated housing.

promote elderspeak.

fund Alzheimer’s disease research.

WHO Age Friendly Environment

The World Health Organization is advocating for which global age-related movement?

1. Set Point Perspective
2. Age Friendly Environment
3. Communication Ecology
4. Successful Cognitive Ageing

Set point perspective

Which model of successful aging places the greatest emphasis on optimism?

1. communication ecology
2. social indicator
3. set point perspective
4. paradox of well-being

Age Friendly Communities

As of 2018, there were _____ countries in the World Health Organization with designated age friendly communities.

1. 11
2. 194
3. 760
4. 39

Communicative Ecology Model

Older adults who buy products aimed at helping them look younger, without questioning whether they really need those products are more subject to ageism, according to the _________ model.

1. set point
2. age friendly
3. optimal aging
4. communicative ecology

Communicative Ecology Model

Which model of successful aging stresses the ways in which older adults personally accept or reject ageism?

1. paradox of well-being
2. communication ecology
3. creative elaboration
4. age unfriendly

Creativity and aging

Openness and creativity

Which personality trait is most closely related to creativity in later adulthood?

1. conscientiousness
2. neuroticism
3. openness to experience
4. agreeableness

Default brain network

Research on the neuroscience of creativity in older adults suggests that the _____________ is involved in supporting creative thought.

1. left hemisphere
2. hippocampus
3. default brain network
4. temporal lobe

Dennis creativity and age

In his work on age and creativity, which measure did Dennis use to quantify creative production by age?

1. quality ratings
2. expert opinions
3. elaboration
4. total output

Planck hypothesis

At the age of 59, Thomas Edison became the first to invent a means of recording motion pictures with sound, though the device was later abandoned in favor of a different method. Edison’s work, however, disputes the ____________, which states that scientists produce their greatest discoveries before the age of 40.

1. Nobel curve
2. Planck hypothesis
3. Lehman principle
4. Simonton law

Planck hypothesis

The Planck hypothesis applies to accomplishments of people in their 30s in the area of:

1. scholarship.
2. literature.
3. science.
4. politics.

Age and creative output problems

Research calculating the relationship between age and creative output is limited because it does not control for:

1. country of origin.
2. area of expertise.
3. ratings of quality.
4. age of death.

One-hit wonders

Somewhat surprisingly, the well-known writer ____________ is technically a “one-hit wonder”

1. Emily Dickinson
2. Margaret Mitchell
3. Agatha Christie
4. Jane Austen

Career age

Because he used ___________ rather than chronological age, Simonton’s model provides a better estimate of an individual’s chance of being productive in late life.

1. creative potential
2. career age
3. time of measurement
4. subjective age

Blind variation and selective retention theory

According to blind variation and selective retention theory (BVSR), the most successful creative people are the ones who:

1. produce the most.
2. maintain their health.
3. have the least training.
4. collaborate with others.

Old age style

The old age style as expressed in creative works is likely to involve which type of theme?

1. concern with reality
2. preoccupation with youth
3. pessimistic view of life
4. fewer symbolic features

Old age style

Feelings of imminent departure, sense of isolation, and greater expressiveness characterize which feature of creativity in later life?

1. selective retention
2. old age style
3. equal odds rule
4. lastingness

Swan song

There is debate in the creativity and aging literature about the existence of the ___________ in the works of older composers.

1. elder theme
2. swan song
3. mini-C emphasis
4. old age style

Tempest

Which of Shakespeare’s plays, the last composed in his life, is said to involve “a private world of the imagination”?

1. Hamlet
2. Othello
3. The Tempest
4. Macbeth

Cognitive flexibility

In a study of scientists originally investigated in college, the quality of ­­­­­­­­­­____________ was shown to predict the number of notable publications late in life.

1. cognitive flexibility
2. self-discipline
3. physical strength
4. personal relationships

Late bloomers

In Simonton’s model of age and creative productivity, which factor primarily predicts whether an older individual will become a “late bloomer”?

1. cohort
2. education
3. career age
4. personality

Beethoven

Which composer remained creative until his death even though he became deaf late in life?

1. Bach
2. Beethoven
3. Chopin
4. Mozart

Rembrandt old age style

You’re visiting a museum showing a special collection of the works of Rembrandt. Which features of his work would lead you to guess which of his paintings came from late in his life?

1. more attention to small details
2. depiction of optimistic themes
3. greater freedom in the paint strokes
4. presence of children and families

Creative potential

The artist Pablo Picasso produced great works of art until just before his death at the age of 91, suggesting that he was high in:

1. social support
2. creative potential
3. subjective well-being
4. career age

Lastingness

The quality of __________________ in the work of older artists applies to creative work that persists over time.

1. flexibility
2. old age style
3. openness
4. lastingness

Successful aging: Final perspectives

Biopsychosocial model of creativity

The biopsychosocial model of creativity in later life regards definitions of eminence as reflecting which set of factors?

1. psychological
2. educational
3. biological
4. sociocultural

Eminent minority productive agers

Most counts of creative works by older adults fail to include which potential group of contributors?

1. Renaissance musicians
2. Ivy League educated men
3. academic scientists
4. eminent minority productive agers

Short answer questions

What is successful aging?

1. What are the three components of successful aging according to Rowe and Kahn definition?
2. What are four criticisms of the Rowe and Kahn model of successful aging?
3. How does the Rowe and Kahn definition of successful aging differ from the WHO model of active aging?
4. What is successful cognitive aging?
5. What are five factors that promote successful aging?
6. What are four goals of the World Health Organization’s age friendly environment movement?

Creativity and aging

1. What are the three basic contributors to creativity in Simonton’s model?
2. What are the advantages of using career age rather than chronological age in understanding the effects of age on creativity?
3. Describe three characteristics of the old age style.
4. What factors appear to stimulate the development of old age style?

Successful aging: Final perspectives

1. How would you define creativity with a lower-case “c”?
2. How might creativity be expressed at the end of life in an "ordinary" older person?
3. List four examples of eminent creative minority agers.

Essay questions

1. How does the WHO concept of active aging differ from the Rowe and Kahn definition?
2. Provide an example from your own experience of the "old age style." Indicate the nature of the work, why you think it exemplifies the old age style, and the factors that may have led to its creation.
3. Look around your own campus and community and list five positive and five negative examples of an age friendly environment.
4. Did creative geniuses who experienced difficulties in old age, such as Picasso, Matisse, and O'Keeffe fit psychology's definition of "successful aging"? Why or why not?
5. How might creativity be affected by sociocultural factors?