Final Report
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National Institute on Aging Institute for Personality and Social Research Workshop on Advancing Integrative Psychological Research on Adaptive and Healthy Aging Thursday, May 21, 2009 Institute of Personality and Social Research University of California, Berkeley This meeting summary was prepared by Sarah Holley, under contract to the National Institute on Aging. The findings and views reported in this document reflect both individual and collective opinions of the workgroup participants and not necessarily those of the National Institute on Aging or the report author. NIA/IPSR Workshop National Institute on Aging/Institute for Personality and Social Research Workshop on Advancing Integrative Psychological Research on Adaptive and Healthy Aging Table of Contents Executive Summary ........................................................................................................iv List of Abbreviations ........................................................................................................vi Workshop Summary: Introduction .................................................................................. 1 Introduction and Framing the Questions ................................................................................................... 1 NIA interests .............................................................................................................................................. 1 NIA vision .................................................................................................................................................. 3 Session 1: Fundamental Social and Affective Processes in Aging .................................. 4 Why isn't aging depressing? ..................................................................................................................... 4 Aging and the use of emotional cues to guide social judgments .............................................................. 6 What is the function of age-related positive gaze preferences? ............................................................... 7 Effective emotion regulation in older adulthood: Converging levels of analysis ....................................... 8 Correlates of social position in brain serotonergic function .................................................................... 10 Exploring the effects of attachment relationships on reactions to transitions ......................................... 11 Session 1: Open discussion ................................................................................................................... 13 Session 2: Healthy Aging over the Lifecourse ............................................................... 15 Stress, social processes, and health over the lifecourse ........................................................................ 15 Biology of resilience: Oxytocin, positive adaptation and health .............................................................. 16 Loneliness: Cause and target ................................................................................................................. 18 Relationship disruptions and health: From social epidemiology to social psychophysiology ................. 19 The promise of interventions for promoting well-being ........................................................................... 21 Psychosocial influences on longevity biomarkers ................................................................................... 22 Session 2: Open discussion ................................................................................................................... 23 Session 3: Decision Making in Aging ............................................................................ 26 Decision making in aging: Emerging insights from affective neuroscience and neuroeconomics ......... 26 Neural basis of decision making in aging ................................................................................................ 28 Age and sex differences in the effects of stress on decision making ..................................................... 29 No time to waste: Understanding why older adults are less subject to the sunk-cost fallacy ................. 30 Wanting and liking for sex by gender and age ........................................................................................ 32 Session 3: Open discussion ................................................................................................................... 33 General Discussion ....................................................................................................... 36 References .................................................................................................................... 38 ii NIA/IPSR Workshop Appendix 1: Agenda ..................................................................................................... 42 Appendix 2: Contact Information .................................................................................. 44 Appendix 3: Suggested Background Readings ............................................................ 49 iii NIA/IPSR Workshop National Institute on Aging/Institute for Personality and Social Research Workshop on Advancing Integrative Psychological Research on Adaptive and Healthy Aging Executive Summary Human development does not end with the entry into adulthood. Research is increasingly demonstrating that older adults continue to undergo important changes over the entire course of the lifespan. These changes touch every domain, including biological, social, emotional, and cognitive functioning. While the picture for certain processes (e.g., cognitive and physical) remains one of decline, other areas show promise for adaptive development (e.g. social and emotional). Furthermore, none of these changes occur in a vacuum. Changes across various domains of functioning are inextricably linked, and many later-life developments are influenced by processes or events set into motion during earlier stages of life. The great challenge for researchers is to uncover the factors that underlie both positive and negative changes over the lifespan, as well as to determine how the various systems interact. In doing so, advances can be made toward understanding age-related changes in important outcomes such as mental and physical well-being, the ability to maintain healthy relationships or make good decisions, or even morbidity and mortality. Such research will further enable the development of targeted interventions that can promote healthy aging. In recent years, the National Institute on Aging (NIA) Division of Behavioral and Social Research (BSR) has sponsored a number of meetings to promote the integration of psychology with other disciplines, around topics such as stress and health, decision-making, and social and economic behavior, in order to promote cross-disciplinary fertilization. Several meetings, held in conjunction with the National Academy of Sciences, have assessed the state of field of psychology of aging and yielded major reports (e.g. “When I’m 64” and “Aging Mind” designed to chart a path for future studies and programs. These meetings have brought together researchers from a number of fields, including psychology, neuroscience, economics, behavioral genetics, and public health. The current workshop, held on May 21, 2009, at the University of California, Berkeley, in conjunction with the Annual Meeting of the Association for Psychological Science in San Francisco, focused on integrative psychological research on adaptive and healthy aging. The workshop was chaired by Dr. Robert Levenson (University of California, Berkeley) and Dr. Lisbeth Nielsen (NIA) and included 57 participants representing a variety of approaches to the field of human development and aging research. The workshop focused on three major themes. The first session explored fundamental social and affective processes in aging, including the causes and consequences of age-related shifts in emotional experiences and emotion regulation. The next series of presentations focused on healthy aging over the lifecourse, concluding with a provocative discussion of how to accurately conceptualize health outcome measures, particularly in the area of biomarkers. The third set of talks focused on decision-making and incorporated neuroscience, social, and cognitive approaches to the investigation of age-related changes in this domain. Invited perspectives were followed by discussions in which meeting participants clarified findings and generated ideas for future research. The agenda was structured to allow the speakers to present ongoing research findings and questions, and to maximize the opportunity for discussion among all participants. Dr. Nielsen identified three areas to address across the discussion topics: 1) encourage consideration of how to advance study of adaptive and healthy aging using integrative approaches bridging psychology and other disciplines; 2) encourage cross-talk between scientists studying social and emotional function, psychological and biological processes in health, and decision-making; and 3) identify key opportunities and needs for advancing the science in each domain. Across all of the presentations and discussions, several prominent themes were explored and key challenges for future research were identified. These including the following: Taking a lifecourse perspective on aging research. Speakers and participants stressed the importance of looking at aging