Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast with doctor Scott
Speaker 1: Barry Kaufman, where we give you insights into the mind, brain, behavior,
Speaker 1: and creativity. Each episode will feature a new guest who
Speaker 1: will stimulate your mind and give you a greater understanding
Speaker 1: of yourself, others, and the world we live in. Hopefully
Speaker 1: we'll also provide a glimpse into human possibility. Thanks for
Speaker 1: listening and enjoy the podcast. I'm really excited to have
Speaker 1: Christina M. Pure Pali on the show today. Christina is
Speaker 1: a third year graduate student in the Clinical Geropsychology doctoral
Speaker 1: program at the University of Alabama under the mentorship of
Speaker 1: doctor Patricia A. Parmali. Her research explores associations of chronic
Speaker 1: illness with psychological health and older adults, and she is,
Speaker 1: by a lot of accounts, a rising star in the
Speaker 1: field of psychology. Thank you for chatting with me today, Christina.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much Scott for having me and for
Speaker 1: the gracious introduction. Oh my pleasure. I really excited to
Speaker 1: talk about your research today because you're doing some really
Speaker 1: fascinating work that we haven't highlighted yet on the Psychology
Speaker 1: Podcast and probably is just underrated work in psychology. In general,
Speaker 1: would you agree with that statement. I would agree that
Speaker 1: it is underrated, that it's poorly understood, that it's embryonic,
Speaker 1: and that it's riddled with all sorts of stigma. I
Speaker 1: think people are very, very uncomfortable, especially in the United
Speaker 1: States and perhaps generally, talking about aging, because a conversation
Speaker 1: about aging necessarily invites a conversation about mortality and finite noess.
Speaker 1: But you know, probably more practically, we've nearly doubled the
Speaker 1: human life span over the past century, and so we
Speaker 1: are now able to study the things that our own
Speaker 1: biology once precluded. So part of it is a social
Speaker 1: reluctance to discuss aging, But the other part of it
Speaker 1: is that we just haven't had a lifespan long enough
Speaker 1: to study until very recently. Yeah, you make a lot
Speaker 1: of really good points. Certainly old people. If I may say,
Speaker 1: what's the most political correct I think that's a great question.
Speaker 1: And there's actually a lot of debate about this. The
Speaker 1: old people not like being cold old people. It's like,
Speaker 1: like what do they want to be called? So typically
Speaker 1: in the literature and in the discourse, we say older adults,
Speaker 1: something that's totally out of vogue and is the equivalent
Speaker 1: of committing an intellectual faux pas is referring to someone
Speaker 1: as an elder. I didn't do that, or elderly. You
Speaker 1: didn't do that at all, and in fact, I'm really
Speaker 1: impressed that you asked. And geriatric. Just referring to someone
Speaker 1: as a geriatric is perceived as a bit uh derogatory.
Speaker 1: Sometimes people call me a geriatric, not like my students,
Speaker 1: and I'm like my thirties. One day, one day they
Speaker 1: will have more perspective. But in general the term is
Speaker 1: older adults or just adult. Yeah. Adult. I don't know
Speaker 1: when I'll ever become an adult. I don't know either
Speaker 1: any day now I'm hoping. Yeah myself, Well, you're interesting
Speaker 1: you study this, but I've also read some of your
Speaker 1: blog posts, your articles in this, and you're very you
Speaker 1: get personal in some of your articles. It seems like
Speaker 1: you personally don't really have a fear of aging. Is
Speaker 1: that right? I have a curiosity about Yeah, that's what
Speaker 1: I get. I get more of like an intellectual curiosity.
Speaker 1: Then it's an intellectual curiosity. But to deny the anxiety
Speaker 1: around aging, I don't think I think is dishonest. I
Speaker 1: think it's something that is inevitable, and it is something
Speaker 1: that does require contemplation. And I argue that the earlier
Speaker 1: you think about your aging, the earlier and more often
Speaker 1: you think about your own more time, the more gracefully
Speaker 1: you will live your life. I think young adults sort
Speaker 1: of have the permission to develop and mature, and for
Speaker 1: some reason, older adults have to age. It's that sort
Speaker 1: of language is very interesting. When we say that people
Speaker 1: are aging, I believe that we're sort of confining them
Speaker 1: to this sort of cul de sac where they cannot
Speaker 1: emerge towards new and exciting potentials. And yet younger people
Speaker 1: can develop and mature, which suggests that there's room for
Speaker 1: growth and expansion. And I think that that is a linguistic,
Speaker 1: subtle way through which we propagate our fear of aging.
Speaker 1: I am not afraid of aging because I think I
Speaker 1: think about it, and because I am exposed to older
Speaker 1: adults all the time. And we know that through exposure,
Speaker 1: just mere exposure, we are able to deconstruct our anxieties
Speaker 1: and stereotypes about ideas or out groups. Yeah. I mean
Speaker 1: that's just a fundamental lesson of life. The more you
Speaker 1: expose yourself to people that you fear or that seem
Speaker 1: so different from you, the more you realize they're really
Speaker 1: not that as different as you think. Well, right, it's
Speaker 1: sort of outports contact hypothesis, you know, the idea that
Speaker 1: under specific conditions, continued and positive meaningful exposure to an
Speaker 1: outgroup or an other deconstructs the discomfort that we bring
Speaker 1: to the initial interaction. And I actually think that, and
Speaker 1: this is consistent with the gerontological literature, both the geropsychological
Speaker 1: literature and the gero sociological literature. Most people who elect
Speaker 1: or self select to go into gerontological vocations actually cite
Speaker 1: having very positive, meaningful early experiences with older people, grandparents,
Speaker 1: great aunts and uncles, even older parent and such as mine,
Speaker 1: who have sort of modeled the beauty and privilege of
Speaker 1: human aging, you know, not the tragedy of it. I
Speaker 1: really like that framing of it. You know. I work
Speaker 1: in the field of positive psychology. You can almost see
Speaker 1: a field of called positive geropsychology. Yeah, yeah, well maybe
Speaker 1: you've heard of this. I'm sure you have. Or Carstensen
Speaker 1: is an esteemed geropsychologist at Stanford University, and she is
Speaker 1: actually credited with conceptualizing the idea of socio emotional selectivity,
Speaker 1: which is the idea that is, time horizons decrease naturally
Speaker 1: among older adults. Cognitively, they are more likely to bias
Speaker 1: positive experiences in stimuli. And so the idea is that
Speaker 1: they realize that time is a scarce resource, and so
Speaker 1: how are they going to spend it? Are they going
Speaker 1: to spend it worrying? Are they going to spend it
Speaker 1: seeking out the approval and appraisal of their peers. No,
Speaker 1: They're going to spend their time fostering relationships, exploring new things,
Speaker 1: creating meaning. And what we actually see is that among
Speaker 1: older people, their social networks actually begin to prone or
Speaker 1: to get smaller, because they become more discriminating in the
Speaker 1: sort of relationships that they maintain in foster in later life,
Speaker 1: if the relationship is negative or it's draining, they prune
Speaker 1: them out. Because wait, that's so interesting. So have you
Speaker 1: looked at this within like nursing homes, Like the social
Speaker 1: dynamics of nursing homes. Like if you're like ninety years
Speaker 1: old and they're sowing, you don't like they'll just say
Speaker 1: screw you, right, I mean, like, what do you have
Speaker 1: to lose? What do you have to lose. I don't exactly.
Speaker 1: I don't want to essentialize here, but that's essentially the
Speaker 1: spirit of the argument is that I don't have time
Speaker 1: to waste on nonsense. My life too short, I don't
Speaker 1: have too much time left. I ought to be doing
Speaker 1: the things that make me happy, the things that add
Speaker 1: meaning to my life, the things that are substantive and exciting,
Speaker 1: not the things that are draining and superficial. For sure.
Speaker 1: So there's a geropsychology, but you're actually in clinical geropsychology.
Speaker 1: So do you see patients. Do you actually see older
Speaker 1: adults as patients? I do. I do, And so geropsychology,
Speaker 1: just as a definition for our listeners, is essentially the
Speaker 1: psychology of aging, and more specifically, clinical geropsychology is working
Speaker 1: with older adults clinically to assess, diagnose, and treat. And
Speaker 1: so in the service of that training, I work at
Speaker 1: a geriatric in patient hospital where we're dealing with severe
Speaker 1: mental illness. But the patients who come to the clinic
Speaker 1: are presenting with a catalog of things, you know, anxiety
Speaker 1: and depressive symptomology, but most of them are coping or
Speaker 1: trying to manage their own aging process. Many of our
Speaker 1: patients have recently retired or considering retirement, have lost spouses,
Speaker 1: have had children move out, and so a lot of
Speaker 1: it is transitional and meeting making work, oh yeah, which
Speaker 1: is what we all go through through in our lives.
Speaker 1: And there's kind of like a unique meaning making that
Speaker 1: happens towards the end of your life. What are some
Speaker 1: of the unique issues that older adults face that the
Speaker 1: younger adults do not confront as head on, so to speak.
Speaker 1: That's a great question, and I'm a bit reluctant to
Speaker 1: answer it because I think this is part of the issue.
Speaker 1: I think as a culture, we tend to otherise older
Speaker 1: people that what they go through is something that I
Speaker 1: cannot qualitatively understand because they are different from me. And
Speaker 1: the truth of the matter is, you know, Scott, you're
Speaker 1: aging and I'm aging, and we've been aging since the
Speaker 1: day we were born. Only young people are allowed to
Speaker 1: develop and mature and older people have to age. But
Speaker 1: to answer your question, there are some obvious differences that
Speaker 1: we do need to recognize. For example, your body, your
Speaker 1: body changes, you become more disabled with time. Deep interest
Speaker 1: of mine is every day quality of life with rheumatic
Speaker 1: diseases like osteo arthritis, and how knee pain and chronic
Speaker 1: disease like obesity affects necessary and discretionary activity patterns, And
Speaker 1: so older adults have to cope with losses physical losses, arthritis,
Speaker 1: chronic disease, pain, macular degeneration, hearing loss. These are the
Speaker 1: things that not only affect them physically, but also affect
Speaker 1: them socially. For example, if you can't hear your loved one,
Speaker 1: or if you can't see anything, you're less likely to engage.
Speaker 1: So these are things that older groups tend to have
Speaker 1: to manage more often and more seriously than younger people.
Speaker 1: Another unique struggle is changes in cognition. You know, for example,
Speaker 1: older adults tend to have poor working memory. As people age,
Speaker 1: their fluid intelligence tends to decrease or their ability. But
Speaker 1: so even though there are these losses in certain domain,
Speaker 1: we have to recognize that there are gains. So cognitively,
Speaker 1: for example, older adults will school you in terms of
Speaker 1: crystallized intelligence, in terms of understanding the world, facts, semantics, wisdom, experience.
Speaker 1: There's no vocabulary, there's no competing with older adults there.
Speaker 1: I mean, you don't see like ninety year olds on Jeopardy,
Speaker 1: probably because they're too physically impaired to make the trick
Speaker 1: to California. If we could do it remotely, I'm sure
Speaker 1: we skype. We should skype a whole have Skype Jeopardy.
Speaker 1: I totally I love the idea. Well, I talk at
Speaker 1: them in from the nursing homes. Yeah, I bet they
Speaker 1: would school everyone. Oh and also just psychologically and just
Speaker 1: effectively in general, we get happier as we age. There
Speaker 1: is good research to support or to suggest that being
Speaker 1: a twenty something being a thirty year old is actually
Speaker 1: really uncomfortable because it's wrought with financial insecurity, relation instability,
Speaker 1: vocational ambiguity. And as you get older, your relationships are
Speaker 1: more solidified, you are more financially healthy, you tend to
Speaker 1: have a better understanding of yourself and of your preferences.
Speaker 1: And again the socio emotional factor, the idea that time
Speaker 1: is scarce and you really need to be discriminating in
Speaker 1: the experiences that you're indulging. I really like that. If
Speaker 1: I may ask how old are you, well, I am
Speaker 1: twenty five. I just turned twenty five. I asked this
Speaker 1: specifically for a reason because I want to ask you
Speaker 1: what is your subjective age? Yes? I knew you were
Speaker 1: going to do that. I am very interested in subjective
Speaker 1: age or felt age, and it varies. I'll tell you mine, yeah,
Speaker 1: tell me yours. How old do you feel right now?
Speaker 1: Twenty five? Yes? Why do you feel twenty five? And
Speaker 1: based reading your blogs, you say you feel older? I
Speaker 1: bet you feel my age. I'm older my whole life.
Speaker 1: I know, I know you've said that. You've said that, God,
Speaker 1: I'm an old soul. Well, sorry, what do you ask me?
Speaker 1: Though you asked me so. No, I just asked you
Speaker 1: what your subjective age was and you shared it with
Speaker 1: me just twenty five? You know, I think I feel
Speaker 1: my age. I feel twenty five, but I do you
Speaker 1: look twenty four? If I may say, oh okay, I'm flattered,
Speaker 1: thank you. I like to get cheeky on the psychology
Speaker 1: podcast I did. That's why I love it. So it
Speaker 1: really depends, you know. The literature suggests that subjective age
Speaker 1: actually increases when your health is poor, so there's an
Speaker 1: inverse relationship generally between your subjective age and your physical ability,
Speaker 1: for example. But I actually find the opposite. I find
Speaker 1: just anecdotally that I often and feeling my best when
Speaker 1: I'm feeling older, when I'm feeling wise and smart and prudent.
Speaker 1: But I also as much as I find subjective age interesting,
Speaker 1: and I do think it's an important and an elegant
Speaker 1: economical sort of index of someone's health and well being.
Speaker 1: For example, if you ask someone how old do you feel,
Speaker 1: and they say, well, I feel ninety five and you
Speaker 1: know they're thirty, that means something that's clinically meaningful. That
Speaker 1: doesn't mean it's accurate, It just means that it's meaningful.
Speaker 1: But I take umbrage with the concept at times because
Speaker 1: I think older adults are more likely to endorse feeling
Speaker 1: younger as a way of dissociating against the stigma that
Speaker 1: is attached to old age. So we have to really
Speaker 1: question to what extent it is a valid you know, index,
Speaker 1: or if it's a sort of defensive response. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: study the daily in variability and subjective age, like, have
Speaker 1: you actually stud like how that fluctuates within an individual
Speaker 1: on a data basis? Yes, I'm using the Midas data set,
Speaker 1: which is the oh yeah, everyone uses that same data set.
Speaker 1: What loves Midas midlife in the United States? And what's
Speaker 1: fabulous about this data set is that not only does
Speaker 1: it have just the catalog of variables and it's rich
Speaker 1: and complete, but they have a There was a sub
Speaker 1: study that looked at daily variability and all sorts of
Speaker 1: things physical pain, affect, busyness, leisure activity. And so what
Speaker 1: I did was create a different score between someone's chronological
Speaker 1: age and they're endorsed or subjective age, and used multi
Speaker 1: level modeling to see to what extent variability or discrepancy
Speaker 1: in felt versus chronological age predicted these daily health outcomes
Speaker 1: like pain and fatigue and sadness. And we actually found
Speaker 1: what im and finding this is still being considered for
Speaker 1: conference and for a paper, is that feeling older or
Speaker 1: endorsing feelings of oldness was associated with more daily fatigue, sadness,
Speaker 1: and physical symptoms. So that's interesting. I'm not sure what
Speaker 1: it means exactly right now, but it is interesting. Conversely,
Speaker 1: feeling younger than one's chronological age was associated with more
Speaker 1: positive outcomes like energy and positive affect. Okay, that's really
Speaker 1: interesting research. I'm glad someone's doing it. Well, I am,
Speaker 1: by no means the first one to do it, the
Speaker 1: first one I've heard of. Well, that's all. It matters.
Speaker 1: That's because you're not nosedeven the Gerald literature. But there
Speaker 1: are a few scholars at in North Carolina and Stephen
Speaker 1: Yanek who has sort of conceptualized the idea of subjective
Speaker 1: age and has started to look at daily variability in
Speaker 1: that construct. Excellent, so idea. I definitely want to give
Speaker 1: props to them as well. So there are these different constructs.
Speaker 1: There's subjective age, chronological age, and then can I throw
Speaker 1: in a third one, there's biological age. I mean there's
Speaker 1: research showing that, like, you know, you can have the
Speaker 1: teleomere length of like a your chronological age. It doesn't
Speaker 1: really matter. Like, if you're really healthy, you could actually be,
Speaker 1: for all intensive purposes, ten years younger than your chronological age. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there is evidence to suggest that humans have the potential
Speaker 1: to live up to one hundred and twenty years? Oh
Speaker 1: is that right? Think about that for a second. You
Speaker 1: know that sounds horrible. I'll jug, yeah, I gotta talk
Speaker 1: to you after this. Oh my god, how many more
Speaker 1: fruit smoothies do I add them? But you know, think
Speaker 1: about that for a second. You know, if that's really true,
Speaker 1: midlife would be sixty years old, right, which is fascinating
Speaker 1: because right now, sixty by no means an older adult,
Speaker 1: but you're by no means young. That's the start of
Speaker 1: retirement and thinking about retirement maybe, or you know, children moving.
Speaker 1: It's a time of transition. But if it's really true
Speaker 1: that we have the potential to live until one hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty, that means we've got a lot of life
Speaker 1: left after sixty. So yes, that would be a very
Speaker 1: interesting prospect. I wrote a article called Confessions of a
Speaker 1: Late Bloomer a while ago. I'll send you the article
Speaker 1: that I think you'd appreciate. That's all about, you know,
Speaker 1: this extended lifespan and why there's so many more opportunities
Speaker 1: to even like change fields you know, later in life,
Speaker 1: you know, absolutely absolutely. I mean I'd probably if I
Speaker 1: knew I was living one hundred and twenty, I think
Speaker 1: I'd pursue my lifelong dream of being an opera singer.
Speaker 1: I'd start that at ninety and have a good thirty
Speaker 1: year career. Is that real for you? Is that something
Speaker 1: that really interests you? Yeah? I was a voice major
Speaker 1: as an undergrad. Wow. I did some shows and stuff,
Speaker 1: but then decided to psychologies where I fell as I
Speaker 1: could have the greatest meaning and purpose in life. But
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, I feel like I would start
Speaker 1: dividing my life into different segments. Maybe, well, I mean
Speaker 1: this is this could be possible. It's not like hypothetical, right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And that's again one of the benefits of getting older
Speaker 1: is this sort of benevolent irreverence, sort of disregarding what
Speaker 1: other people have to say or what they think about you,
Speaker 1: because you have to be discriminating with this very valuable
Speaker 1: resource that you have, which is your time. It's not
Speaker 1: uncommon for a lot of older people to pick up
Speaker 1: a new hobby or to completely shift vocations when they
Speaker 1: get older. For that reason. Have you ever like fantasized
Speaker 1: about being a vampire. I'm not sure how it's relevant
Speaker 1: to No, I have to you know, vampires live forever.
Speaker 1: Vampires aren't actually real. Oh no, sorry to report that.
Speaker 1: Let's test it, okay. So another area that you study
Speaker 1: is your interest in how feelings of usefulness to others
Speaker 1: in later life predict active versus passive coping strategies with
Speaker 1: chronic pain. This to me seems so related to the
Speaker 1: idea of meaning right and maintaining meaning in old age.
Speaker 1: Another really important research topic. Could you tell me a
Speaker 1: little more about that. Absolutely? Absolutely, so older paradigms of
Speaker 1: gerontological science have really adopted the viewer perspective that older
Speaker 1: adults are consumers of resources, that they are consumers of
Speaker 1: social services, that they are dependent, and that just isn't true.
Speaker 1: We know that older adults are generative and seek to
Speaker 1: be generative in later life. We see that when we
Speaker 1: look at volunteer stats, almost most volunteers are older adults.
Speaker 1: And so modern, more modern paradigms of aging and of
Speaker 1: gerontological science are really embracing the idea that older adults
Speaker 1: are not consumers or not passive consumers. They are actors
Speaker 1: with agency and meaning and purpose who can and do contribute.
Speaker 1: So Iva Kahana is a sociologist at Case Western and
Speaker 1: her work has been incredibly influential on me, and she
Speaker 1: posits that we need to start adopting more provision based
Speaker 1: attitude towards aging, the idea that older adults can contribute
Speaker 1: and have the ability to contribute in meaningful ways. And
Speaker 1: so the idea of usefulness is really interesting because we
Speaker 1: are finding that providing social support, rather than just receiving it,
Speaker 1: accounts for more variance in health outcomes, which is so fascinating.
Speaker 1: There was a study done and it's in my payright,
Speaker 1: I don't have the citation, handy, but essentially, the question
Speaker 1: was what's better for people giving social support or receiving it,
Speaker 1: and among older adults in this particular sample, in this
Speaker 1: particular study, providing social support tended to account for more
Speaker 1: variance and positive affect and health than the opposite. And
Speaker 1: in fact, there's not providing social support then receiving social support. Okay,
Speaker 1: So providing social support was essentially better than giving versus
Speaker 1: taking exactly. And so there's actually evidence to suggest that
Speaker 1: giving too much to older adults, which is giving in general,
Speaker 1: creates a sort of dependency based idea that actually makes
Speaker 1: older adults less able and you know, less healthy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's an issue of autonomy and meaning very much related
Speaker 1: to the things we study in positive psychology. There probably
Speaker 1: could be better cross talk between the fields. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: it's funny because the idea of for this manuscript came
Speaker 1: not only from just doing you know, research and classic
Speaker 1: literature review. But I was talking to my father one
Speaker 1: day after he had gotten his rotator cuff surgery. Mister
Speaker 1: Pier Plly, mister Pier Palley, and it was you know,
Speaker 1: it must have been a few days after his surgery
Speaker 1: and I called to check in on him and I
Speaker 1: was like, you know, what are you doing And he's like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm doing my exercises. I'm exercising. I'm like already, like
Speaker 1: you just got this surgery. That's incredible. And he said, well,
Speaker 1: you know, your mother needs me. I got to be
Speaker 1: useful around here. And you know, I had heard that
Speaker 1: many times before, but in that moment, it sort of
Speaker 1: just struck me. It's like, yes, Like to what extent
Speaker 1: does feeling needed actually motivate us to engage in behaviors
Speaker 1: that are healthy and adaptive. And so that question is
Speaker 1: particularly interesting in older populations because they are constantly bombarded
Speaker 1: with messages of opposite, like that you aren't useful, that
Speaker 1: you can't do anything, that you are actually sucking up resources.
Speaker 1: And so if we could sort of leverage the idea
Speaker 1: that older adults have skills and experiences and resources that
Speaker 1: make the world better, well, then how can we use
Speaker 1: that to make their own lives better and healthier? And
Speaker 1: so what we found in this study was that adults
Speaker 1: who endorsed feeling more useful to their friends and family
Speaker 1: were more likely to adopt these active coping processes with
Speaker 1: their pain, so problem solving, exercising, doing research, staying busy.
Speaker 1: That's a very exciting idea, very exciting. Indeed, can you
Speaker 1: explain to our listeners what a passive coping strategy would be? Sure? So,
Speaker 1: a passive coping strategy is essentially anything that you employ
Speaker 1: psychologically to distance yourself from the thing that is bothering you. So,
Speaker 1: for example, if you just failed an exam, a passive
Speaker 1: coping strategy would be to wishful think, oh God, I
Speaker 1: wish that hadn't happened, or to ignore it to you
Speaker 1: tell yourself that it didn't really happen, denial or ruminating,
Speaker 1: or just expressing negative affect, oh god, this is terrible, catastrophizing.
Speaker 1: An active coping mechanism would be something like going office
Speaker 1: hours or studying more and so putting that. In terms
Speaker 1: of pain and gerontology, we found that people who were
Speaker 1: experiencing knee pain who felt more useful were more likely
Speaker 1: to do the things that were healthy, like engage in exercises,
Speaker 1: get some information about their disease, which is a very
Speaker 1: exciting idea, very exciting, and in an addition to that factor,
Speaker 1: another factor that seems to be important from what I've
Speaker 1: read is, you know, loneliness is one of the biggest
Speaker 1: silent literally silent killers. Terrible. Yes, absolutely? Is that intertwined
Speaker 1: at all with needing to matter? Oh? I think so?
Speaker 1: Let me think about this a bit more so. When
Speaker 1: you feel useful, just in general, you know, you feel
Speaker 1: like people rely on you, depend on you, need you.
Speaker 1: And more importantly, when you feel useful, you are embedded
Speaker 1: in a social network that keeps you accountable, that checks
Speaker 1: in on you. You know, how you doing? How's that
Speaker 1: knee pain? Missus Jones? What do you need? Do you
Speaker 1: have access? I've got a mom who checks in on
Speaker 1: me every ten minutes, You've got social catch Can you
Speaker 1: ever have too much check in? Yes, especially if you're
Speaker 1: you come from an over zealous Italian or Jewish family,
Speaker 1: I think absolutely. But the point is, I think loneliness
Speaker 1: is probably terrible for a catalog of reasons. But I
Speaker 1: think it's terrible because you can get away with doing
Speaker 1: stuff that people aren't going to call you out on.
Speaker 1: So if you're alone, no one's going to stop you.
Speaker 1: From smoking that cigarette. No one's going to stop you
Speaker 1: from overeating, no one's going to stop you from accountability.
Speaker 1: There's no one who you feel like you need to
Speaker 1: be your best self for. That makes so much sense. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's also a little sad. What is just think about
Speaker 1: people who don't have that in their lives. I mean,
Speaker 1: just it breaks my heart. Yeah, yeah, it is. It's
Speaker 1: very sad. And part of it is because I go
Speaker 1: back to this because I really do believe that it's
Speaker 1: true that we are just so afraid of aging and
Speaker 1: we want to avoid it. We want to avoid any
Speaker 1: reminder of our mortality. And there ain't no better reminder
Speaker 1: of your mortality than an older person. It's actually interesting
Speaker 1: because there's some research to suggest that when an older
Speaker 1: person develops Alzheimer's a dementia, particularly in a nursing home,
Speaker 1: their peers will avoid them as if the dementia is
Speaker 1: contagious in some way. So if that's true within groups,
Speaker 1: if that is true within clusters of older adults, then
Speaker 1: of course it stands to reason that we avoid older
Speaker 1: adults like the plague. I mean, that's really sad, and
Speaker 1: that even creates more likelihood that person is going to
Speaker 1: be isolated. I mean, that's really I want to cry.
Speaker 1: That's horrible. Yeah. Yeah, And it's just synergistic, right, because
Speaker 1: it's like the less socially engaged you are, the less
Speaker 1: positive experience, the less positive experiences you're accumulating, which creates
Speaker 1: more depression, which creates more isolation, which then creates more
Speaker 1: physical disability. I mean, it's just a terribly vicious cycle,
Speaker 1: and it's part of the reason why we need psychosocial
Speaker 1: interventions committed to this idea of usefulness to interrupt that cycle.
Speaker 1: You know, just take the example of osteoarthritis. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like oway is very debilitating, it's very painful, and
Speaker 1: because it's painful, people engaged in sedentary behavior. They sit around,
Speaker 1: which means are not going out and fostering relationships, which
Speaker 1: means that they're getting depressed, which means that they're eating
Speaker 1: more and engaging in even more sedentary behavior. And you
Speaker 1: can just see how it sort of spirals out of control.
Speaker 1: And so we need to learn how to interrupt that
Speaker 1: cycle through programs and research that really challenges this idea
Speaker 1: that older adults are liabilities and not assets. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: seems like these ideas need to propagate the nursing homes
Speaker 1: more than they do in terms of programming and stuff. Yeah. Absolutely, Well,
Speaker 1: I'm really so glad that you are in this field
Speaker 1: and that you get to contribute to this field, because
Speaker 1: it sounds like you've got you're obviously very intrinsically motivated.
Speaker 1: Why are you so interested in older people? It's a
Speaker 1: great question, Like I alluded to earlier outports, you know,
Speaker 1: contact hypothesis. I was raised in a family with some
Speaker 1: really wonderful older adults. I saw how my parents took
Speaker 1: care their parents, and so that's just like this sort
Speaker 1: of emotional reason. I just continued positive, consistently positive exposure
Speaker 1: to older adults throughout my life, starting in childhood. But
Speaker 1: you know, more practically, you know, the world in the
Speaker 1: United States are aging precipitously. You know, by twenty thirty,
Speaker 1: one in five Americans, or about seventy two million people,
Speaker 1: will be considered an older adult. And so, and of
Speaker 1: course this is compounded by the idea that not only
Speaker 1: are we living longer, but fertility rates are at a
Speaker 1: record low, and so demographically speaking, if you imagine it
Speaker 1: as sort of like an inverted pyramid, we have all
Speaker 1: the young people at the bottom and all the older
Speaker 1: people at the top. And so we need a motivated
Speaker 1: and energized generation of scholars and clinicians and service people
Speaker 1: devoted to understanding aging. And I want to be part
Speaker 1: of that generation. And more interestingly to me, like I said,
Speaker 1: we are now able to study phenomena psychologically, biologically, physiologically
Speaker 1: that we weren't able to study one hundred years ago
Speaker 1: because our own biology precluded it. But now that we
Speaker 1: are living so much longer, we have so many more
Speaker 1: questions to answer, so many more opportunities to exploit. It's
Speaker 1: one of the reasons, for example, I'm so interested in
Speaker 1: aging with HIV for example. I mean, like, twenty years ago,
Speaker 1: you couldn't live with HIV into your sixties. Now you can.
Speaker 1: That's just one example of very promising, excited, uncharted territory
Speaker 1: that the study of aging affords completely agree. Were there
Speaker 1: any other topics that you wanted to talk about today? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you for asking. I really wanted to spend a
Speaker 1: few moments talking about my blog for Psychology Today called Engaging.
Speaker 1: The full title is Engaging a Millennial's Thoughts on Age
Speaker 1: and Aging, and I attempt to update the content monthly,
Speaker 1: and I try to weave in anecdotal and empirical information.
Speaker 1: You know. I think it was David Pull, a philosopher
Speaker 1: who once observed that writing an academic paper was like
Speaker 1: the equivalent to throwing it into a garbage pail. And
Speaker 1: it's because most go on read, you know, so it's
Speaker 1: like there. It's been estimated that about two point five
Speaker 1: million papers academic papers get published annually, few go cited,
Speaker 1: and even fewer are actually read. And even if they
Speaker 1: are read, you know, it's typically by the authors themselves
Speaker 1: or referees in peer review journals, or editors. And so
Speaker 1: the problem is that science is not being disseminated in
Speaker 1: the way that it ought to be. It's not actually
Speaker 1: reaching the people it's designed to reach. It's just sort
Speaker 1: of being recycled in our academic you know, echo chamber.
Speaker 1: And so I sort of wanted to play with an
Speaker 1: online platform like a blog because I wanted to reach
Speaker 1: older adults, you know, I wanted to reach my population
Speaker 1: of interest, absolutely, and I've really been able to do
Speaker 1: that in a way that I could not and would
Speaker 1: not have been able to do through my academic work.
Speaker 1: You know, I've published papers and book chapters, and honestly,
Speaker 1: I can't even tell you if it's been cited but
Speaker 1: or any of them have been cited. But I can
Speaker 1: tell you that I get tons of visibility on this blog,
Speaker 1: and the most exciting thing is that I'm getting feedback
Speaker 1: in real time from older adults who are saying this
Speaker 1: is so spot on for me, or thank you for
Speaker 1: talking about this because no one else does, or wow,
Speaker 1: it's really refreshing to hear that a younger person is
Speaker 1: thinking about these things. It makes me feel less alone.
Speaker 1: I most recently got a comment from a six year
Speaker 1: old reader about my recent piece in which I talked
Speaker 1: about rites of passage sort of punctuate the life course
Speaker 1: and how they're very bittersweet because things like getting married
Speaker 1: and having children are very exciting, but they also measure
Speaker 1: our time to our own mortality. And the reader was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's exactly right. Like, I'm glad that you have given
Speaker 1: me permission to think about death in this way, because
Speaker 1: I think most people get freaked out when we talk
Speaker 1: about death. Oh absolutely, that's wonderful. That's so validating to
Speaker 1: be able to get those kinds of letters. I imagine
Speaker 1: a lot of people in nursing homes all across the
Speaker 1: country sit at their at dinner table with your blog
Speaker 1: printed out, discussing it with each other while they eat
Speaker 1: their chicken noodle soup. I can only hope. So that's
Speaker 1: why I like to do it, you know, because I
Speaker 1: am able to access lay people. I'm able to assess
Speaker 1: the people who I want to reach, you know. And
Speaker 1: not only that. It's just like blogging and writing just
Speaker 1: makes me a better thinker, you know. I'm able to
Speaker 1: think more clearly and more creatively because I have more
Speaker 1: degrees of freedom. I'm not tethered to arbitrary word counts
Speaker 1: and formatting that a company's you know, a manuscript submission.
Speaker 1: Those are important and that needs to continue, but I
Speaker 1: think it needs to be complemented by and supplemented with
Speaker 1: these more accessible platforms, so our science and our research
Speaker 1: is really getting disseminated and applied. I really hope that
Speaker 1: grad school advisors are a lot more accepting on blogs
Speaker 1: now than when I was doing it. I was one
Speaker 1: of the first boggers for psychology. To day, wow, and
Speaker 1: I know, I'm like now I feel like an old
Speaker 1: That's awesome, And in grad school it was not accepted,
Speaker 1: and I kind of I felt like a rebel, like
Speaker 1: the bad boy, you know. Yeah, yeah, I hear that.
Speaker 1: I don't think there's quite as much stigma now in
Speaker 1: the advent of all these social media platforms. But it
Speaker 1: is a bit irreverent because in some way I am
Speaker 1: criticizing the classic mechanisms through which science is disseminated, which
Speaker 1: is through peer review, and it's just peer review is
Speaker 1: just woefully inefficient and it's impervious. People can't access it
Speaker 1: either because one they can't understand it because it's written
Speaker 1: in such a terrible boring way, or two because there
Speaker 1: are just other barriers, like you know, passwords that only
Speaker 1: people and you know who are ensconced in the ivory
Speaker 1: towers of academia I can get. And so I really
Speaker 1: wanted to challenge that and interrupt that a bit. You go, girl,
Speaker 1: because you're doing such wonderful stuff, and I really encourage
Speaker 1: you to keep up the blogging and this spirit, the
Speaker 1: young spirit and the old spirit you have. It's an
Speaker 1: interesting sort of combination of spirits. And yeah, thanks for
Speaker 1: being on the show today. Thank you so much for
Speaker 1: having me. I really enjoyed it me too. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for listening to the Psychology Podcast with doctor
Speaker 1: Scott Barry Kaufman. I hope you found this episode just
Speaker 1: as thought provoking as I did. It's something you heard
Speaker 1: today stimulated you in some way. I encourage you to
Speaker 1: join in the discussion at the Psychology podcast dot com.
Speaker 1: That's the Psychology Podcast dot com.