What Are Your Attitudes Toward Aging?

What are your assumptions about late adulthood? Do you seeolder people as basically different from the young in their behav-ior patterns and their outlooks, or just as a few years moremature?

To evaluate the accuracy of your attitudes toward aging,mark each of the following items true or false by clicking on Tor F. Then click the Score button to check your accuracy.

1. T F By age 60 most couples have lost their capacity forsatisfying sexual relations.

2. T F The elderly cannot wait to retire.

3. T F With advancing age people become more exter-nally oriented, less concerned with the self.

4. T F As individuals age, they become less able to adaptsatisfactorily to a changing environment.

5. T F General satisfaction with life tends to decrease aspeople become older.

6. T F As people age they tend to become more homoge-neous—that is, all old people tend to be alike inmany ways.

7. T F For the older person, having a stable intimate rela-tionship is no longer highly important.

8. T F The aged are susceptible to a wider variety of psy-chological disorders than young and middle-agedadults.

9. T F Most older people are depressed much of the time.

10. T F Church attendance increases with age.

11. T F The occupational performance of the older workeris typically less effective than that of the youngeradult.

12. T F Most older people are just not able to learn newskills.

13. T F When forced to make a decision, elderly personsare more cautious and take fewer risks thanyounger persons.

14. T F Compared to younger persons, aged people tend tothink more about the past than the present or thefuture.

15. T F Most elderly people are unable to live independ-ently and reside in nursing homes and other insti-tutions.

Self Assessment

KEY TO ATTITUDES TOWARD AGING QUESTIONNAIRE

1. False. Most healthy couples continue to engage in satisfying sexual activities intotheir 70s and 80s.

2. False. This is too general a statement. Those who find their work satisfying areless desirous of retiring.

3. False. In late adulthood we tend to become more concerned with internalmatter—our physical functioning and our emotions.

4. False. Adaptability remains reasonably stable throughout adulthood.

5. False. Age itself is not linked to noticeable declines in life satisfaction. Of course,we may respond negatively to disease and losses, such as death of aspouse.

6. False. Although we can predict some general trends for older people, we canalso do so for the young. Older people remain heterogeneous in personal-ity and behavior patterns.

7. False. Older people with stable intimate relationships are more satisfied withtheir lives.

8. False. We are susceptible to a wide variety of psychological disorders at all ages.

9. False. Only a minority of older people are depressed.

10. False. Actually church attendance declines, although there is no difference inverbally expressed religious beliefs.

11. False. Although reaction time may increase and general learning ability may un-dergo a slight decline, older people usually have little or no difficulty atfamiliar work tasks. In most jobs, experience and motivation are more im-portant than age.

12. False. Learning may just take a bit longer.

13. False.

14. False. Older people have not been found to direct a higher proportion ofthoughts toward the past than younger people do; but any of us mayspend more time daydreaming if we have more time on our hands.

15. False. Only about 10% of older people require some form of institutional care.

Boxed items reflect your correct responses.