Aging, Executive Functioning, and Social Control
نویسنده
چکیده
Aging is associated with atrophy of the frontal lobes of the brain, which are the seat of executive functions. Because successful social functioning often requires executive control, aging can lead to unintended social changes via deficits in executive control. In this article I review evidence that, due to losses in executive control, aging leads to increased prejudice and social inappropriateness and, under certain circumstances, increased depression and problem gambling. I then discuss theory and research suggesting possible interventions that might ameliorate unwanted social changes brought about by executive decline. KEYWORDS—executive functioning; inhibition; prejudice; social inappropriateness; late-onset depression; gambling In late adulthood, the brain gradually shrinks in total volume and weight. The frontal lobes in particular show significant atrophy with age (Dempster, 1992). The frontal lobes are the seat of executive functions, which include tasks such as planning and controlling thought and behavior. An important consequence of atrophy of the frontal lobes is poor executive functioning, including reduced ability to inhibit irrelevant or unwanted thoughts (Dempster, 1992). Because such failures at thought control lead to contamination of ongoing mental activities with unwanted information, age-related deficits in inhibitory ability have been implicated in a variety of cognitive deficits (Hasher, Zacks, & May, 1999). Inhibitory processes are also theoretically linked to a variety of social behaviors and cognitions, but to date there are only a few empirical investigations of the impact of age-related inhibitory losses on social functioning. This research on aging, inhibition, and social functioning is the focus of this article. AGING, INHIBITION, AND PREJUDICE Older Americans tend to be more prejudiced than their younger counterparts (Schuman, Steeth, Bobo, & Krysan, 1997). This age difference is thought to be related to the historical periods in which the different generations were socialized, and indeed people were more prejudiced 30 and 50 years ago than they are today (Schuman et al., 1997). Nevertheless, this generational explanation for age differences in prejudice might be only part of the story. Automatic or unintentional stereotypic thoughts appear to be common in most people (Devine, 1989), and it might be that older adults have greater difficulty inhibiting these stereotypic thoughts despite their efforts to avoid being prejudiced. Thus, older adults might also be more prejudiced than younger adults because they can no longer inhibit their unintentionally activated stereotypes. Consistent with this line of reasoning, we found that older White adults show greater stereotyping and prejudice toward African Americans than younger White adults do, despite being more concerned about impression management and more motivated to control their prejudices (von Hippel, Silver, & Lynch, 2000). Furthermore, when we measured inhibitory ability (by giving participants paragraphs that contain distracting text and asking them to read the paragraphs aloud without vocalizing the distracting text), we found that the age differences in stereotyping and prejudice were mediated by age differences in inhibition. That is, older adults only showed greater stereotyping and prejudice to the degree that they also showed greater difficulty inhibiting their vocalization of the distracting text. Additionally, individual differences in inhibition were associated with individual differences in prejudice among both older and younger adults, suggesting that the inhibition–prejudice link in older adults is not simply a byproduct of early stages of dementia. These data suggest that because prejudice toward African Americans conflicts with prevailing egalitarian beliefs, older adults attempt to inhibit their racist feelings, but fail. Not all prejudices conflict with egalitarianism, however, and thus not all age differences in prejudice should be mediated by inhibitory deficits. For example, people who are prejudiced against gays perceive homosexuality as a chosen lifestyle, and thus for them anti-gay prejudice does not conflict with egalitarianism (and thus is unlikely to be met with inhibitory efforts). Consistent with this reasoning, a nationally representative survey of older and younger White Americans (von Hippel, Radvansky, & Copeland, 2007) revealed that increased prejudice toward gay men Address correspondence to William von Hippel, School of Psychology, University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD, 4072, Australia; e-mail: [email protected]. CURRENT DIRECTIONS IN PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE 240 Volume 16—Number 5 Copyright r 2007 Association for Psychological Science among older adults was fully mediated by age differences in conservatism, whereas increased racism among older adults was unrelated to conservatism. Thus, some age differences in prejudice (e.g., anti-gay prejudice) might represent cohort effects whereas others (e.g., anti-Black prejudice) might not. AGING, INHIBITION, AND SOCIAL INAPPROPRIATENESS Age-related inhibitory losses have also been implicated in two other types of social inappropriateness. First, older adults are more likely than younger adults to talk excessively and about topics that are irrelevant to the stream of conversation (Pushkar et al., 2000). This increase in ‘‘off-target verbosity’’ is associated with diminished inhibitory ability (measured via the Trail Making Test, which requires participants to trace a pathway among randomly scattered letters and numbers—from A to 1 to B to 2, etc.— and thus to inhibit the natural tendency to follow either an alphabetic or numeric sequence; the Stroop test, which requires participants to name the ink color in which different color words are printed; and verbal fluency), which leaves older adults less capable of stopping their conversation and remaining on topic. Inhibition might also be necessary to restrain oneself from verbalizing thoughts that are better left unsaid, and thus inhibitory deficits might lead older adults to make socially inappropriate remarks. Consistent with this possibility, we found that older adults were more likely than younger adults to inquire about private issues in public settings; this age difference in social inappropriateness appeared to be brought about by inhibitory deficits (measured with a trivia test that includes misleading items that require respondents to inhibit their initial response, e.g., answering ‘‘Black’’ to ‘‘What color are a tiger’s spots?’’; von Hippel & Dunlop, 2005). Furthermore, these age differences emerged despite the fact that older and younger adults agree that it is inappropriate to inquire about such issues in public settings (and indeed, older adults in particular felt less close to those who inquired about private issues in public). These findings suggest a dissociation between knowledge of social rules and the ability to follow them that is consistent with other types of frontal lobe damage. We have also found that individual differences in inhibitory ability (measured via the Stroop test) predict inappropriate social responding among younger adults when they are placed in a sufficiently challenging social situation (von Hippel & Gonsalkorale, 2005). These results with young adults suggest that increased social inappropriateness with age is not just a sign of early stages of dementia, as younger adults also appear to rely on their inhibitory skills to keep socially inappropriate thoughts in check. AGING, INHIBITION, AND DEPRESSION Poor inhibitory ability is not only associated with cognitive and social problems; it is also related to depression (Hertel, 1997). Although depression might cause inhibitory deficits, age-related inhibitory deficits might also contribute to late-onset depression by impairing control of excessive rumination (a tendency to focus on one’s problems without engaging in active problemsolving, which exacerbates and prolongs depression). Note, however, that inhibitory deficits should not lead all, or even most, older adults to excessive rumination. Rather, only those older adults who rely on inhibitory control to stop themselves from ruminating (either chronically or when confronted by negative life events) are likely to develop problems with rumination if they have poor executive control. Older adults disinclined to ruminate and older adults who ruminate but do not try to suppress their ruminative thoughts should not show a relationship between inhibition and rumination. Consistent with this reasoning, we found that inhibitory deficits (measured via the Stroop test, the distracting-text task described above, and a working-memory task) predicted greater depression among late-onset but not early-onset depressed older adults, and that inhibitory deficits had their impact via their role in rumination. That is, among older adults with late-onset depression, poorer inhibition predicted increased rumination, which in turn predicted increased depression. In contrast, among older adults with early-onset depression, inhibitory deficits were not associated with ruminative tendencies, suggesting that these individuals were not relying on inhibition to control their rumination and in all likelihood had developed depression for other reasons (von Hippel, Vasey, Gonda, & Stern, in press). In the case of depression, however, we cannot rule out the possibility that dementia is the root cause of the apparent relationship between inhibitory deficits and late-onset depression, as both are highly associated with dementia. Nevertheless, recent evidence suggests that inhibitory ability is also linked to rumination among younger adults (Whitmer & Banich, 2007), and thus further research might disentangle dementia from the relationship between inhibition and depression by focusing on a younger cohort. Although individual differences in executive control among younger adults are much smaller than those between older and younger adults or among older adults, sufficiently sensitive measures might reveal that inhibitory functioning predicts depression across the lifespan in those with ruminative tendencies who control them via thought suppression. AGING, INHIBITION, AND PROBLEM GAMBLING Analogous to the case with late-onset depression, poor inhibitory ability is unlikely to lead to gambling problems in all or even most older adults. Rather inhibitory deficits might lead to gambling problems only among those who struggle with their impulse to gamble. That is, people who gamble and who are impulsive by nature might be at risk for developing gambling problems as they age, due to losses in the ability to restrain their urge to gamble. Consistent with this possibility, we found that older adults who gamble and are impulsive suffered from greater Volume 16—Number 5 241 William von Hippel
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Social inappropriateness, executive control, and aging.
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تاریخ انتشار 2007