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Older People Have Learned to Pick Their Fights
Senior citizens reported more problems with spouses
and fewer irritations with children
May 12, 2005 – One thing we apparently learn as we
grow older is to pick our fights. Older people are less likely than
younger people to react aggressively when problems come up in their
relationships, University of Michigan research shows.
"Older people appear better able than younger
people to pick their battles," said Kira Birditt, a researcher at the
U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR), the world's largest academic
survey and research organization. "When they're upset with others, older
people are more likely to do nothing or to wait and see if things
improve. Younger people, on the other hand, are more likely to argue and
yell."
One of Birditt's studies, funded by the National
Institutes on Aging, appears in the current (May 2005) issue of the
Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences. As part of a larger
study of interpersonal problems in adulthood, Birditt and colleague
Karen Fingerman of Purdue University interviewed 187 men and women ages
13 to 99.
Participants described the last upsetting situation
they had encountered with their closest, and with their most problematic
social partners. Then the interviewers asked them, "Think back to a
recent time when you were irritated, hurt, or annoyed with (that
person). Can you tell me a little about what happened, why you were
upset and what you did about this situation?"
Younger people were more likely to shout, argue or
walk away in response to problems while older people were more likely to
do nothing. Older people reported less frequent contact with their
social partners and less distress when confronted with interpersonal
problems. Even after the researchers controlled for frequency of contact
and distress levels, the age differences in reactions to conflict
remained.
In another article on the same topic, forthcoming
in Psychology and Aging, Birditt, Fingerman and David Almeida of
Pennsylvania State University explored age differences in exposure and
reactivity to interpersonal tensions using the National Study of Daily
Experiences. Participants ages 25 to 74 described the arguments they
experienced as well as the arguments they avoided each evening for eight
days.
The researchers analyzed the responses of 666
participants who described interpersonal problems (365 participants, or
35 percent of the nationally representative sample said they had not had
any arguments during the eight-day period the interviews covered).
Again, Birditt and colleagues found that older adults reported fewer
interpersonal tensions, were less likely than younger adults to argue
and more likely to do nothing in response to tensions.
"These findings suggest that people may become
better able to regulate their responses to problems as they age," said
Birditt, who is the Elizabeth Douvan Research Fellow at ISR. "They
experience fewer interpersonal problems, feel less negative emotion, and
use less destructive behaviors when upset with their social partners."
The reason may be that older people mellow as they
age and value their relationships more, instead of becoming grumpier and
more like the stereotypical curmudgeons. Or it may be that today's older
adults have better manners than younger people, Birditt speculates, and
are therefore less likely to yell and scream when someone upsets them.
"We did find that older people reported more
problems with spouses and fewer irritations with children than did
younger people," she said. "This may be because older adults' children
have often moved out and they have more contact with their spouses due
to retirement."
Birditt also found that women reported greater
stress in response to problems than men. But surprisingly, conflict
strategies did not vary by gender. "It's possible that gender
differences in conflict strategies vary depending on the emotional
closeness of the relationship," she said. "But we did not find overall
gender differences in conflict strategies across types of social
partners."
In future research, Birditt hopes to explore how
different types of reactions to interpersonal stress influence
psychological well being. "People assume that it's best to actively deal
with interpersonal tensions by discussing problems and trying to figure
out ways to solve them.
"But we found that most people avoid problems by
not saying anything, ignoring the situation and just letting it pass.
Maybe avoidance isn't such a bad way to deal with tensions after all."
Source:
Established in 1948, the Institute for Social
Research (ISR) is among the world's oldest survey research
organizations, and a world leader in the development and application of
social science methodology. ISR conducts some of the most widely-cited
studies in the nation, including the Survey of Consumer Attitudes, the
National Election Studies, the Monitoring the Future Study, the Panel
Study of Income Dynamics, the Health and Retirement Study, the Columbia
County Longitudinal Study and the National Survey of Black Americans.
ISR researchers also collaborate with social scientists in more than 60
nations on the World Values Surveys and other projects, and the
Institute has established formal ties with universities in Poland,
China, and South Africa. ISR is also home to the Inter-University
Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), the world's
largest computerized social science data archive. Visit the ISR Web site
at
www.isr.umich.edu for more information.
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