Cognitive factors of life satisfaction among the Russian elderly

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Cognitive factors of life satisfaction among the Russian elderly

Elena V. Belovo, Zlata V. Boyko, Elena Yu. Shurupova

Moscow State Pedagogical University

Peoples' Friendship University of Russia (RUDN University)

Psychological-and-Pedagogical Centre for Children and Adolescents “Merry Steps”

Abstract

The overall aim of this article was to examine factors related to life satisfaction in old age. There are several approaches to understanding life satisfaction in psychology. Some theories that emphasize objective circumstances as most influential for life satisfaction are commonly labelled bottom-up theories, whereas theories that focus on stable individual characteristics are commonly labelled top-down theories. It is argued that certain personality traits, in particular extraversion and neuroticism, partly determine a person's satisfaction with life. At the same time, cognitive factors related to life satisfaction are rarely the subject of empirical research. In this study, age, social status (works, does not work, in retirement), type of family (nuclear or extended), and a number of indices of cognitive functioning (cognitive flexibility, memory - short-term and long-term, creativity and thinking) were used as predictor variables of life satisfaction. Ninety-seven respondents aged 50-84 participated in the research, which finds that, along with non-cognitive factors of life satisfaction, cognitive factors play great roles as well.

Based on the data obtained, an empirical model of cognitive factors of life satisfaction was constructed. This research demonstrates that all cognitive variables examined (flexibility of thinking, long-term memory, short-term memory, thinking and creativity) make positive contributions to increasing satisfaction; notably the roles of long-term memory and creativity are especially salient. This study also found satisfaction is significantly higher among working older respondents when compared with their non-working colleagues, with the oldest employees the most satisfied. Family status is a factor related to life satisfaction in old age as well, since old people who live with a spouse are more satisfied than those who live in extended families with children and grandchildren. A regression model combined variables from top-down and bottom-up theories. The model includes memory and age as personal characteristics, and family type as a circumstantial predictor for life satisfaction in old age.

Key words: life satisfaction, old age, cognitive processes, top-down theories, bottom up theories, predictors for life satisfaction, the Russian elderly

Аннотация

psychological elderly aging parent

Когнитивные факторы удовлетворенности жизнью в пожилом возрасте

Е.В. Беловол¹, З.В. Бойко², Е.Ю. Шурупова³

Московский педагогический государственный университет2Российский университет дружбы народов3

В работе изучаются факторы удовлетворенности жизнью в пожилом возрасте. В настоящее время в психологии существует несколько подходов к пониманию этого конструкта. Ряд теорий акцентирует внимание на объективных обстоятельствах как оказывающих основное влияние на удовлетворенность жизнью личности. Такой подход называется «восходящий» (bottom-up). При этом существуют теории, в которых предполагается, что стабильные индивидуальные характеристики личности являются детерминантами удовлетворенности жизнью. Данные теории объединяются в рамках подхода, который получил название «нисходящий» (top-down). Он подразумевает, что определенные черты личности, в частности экстраверсия и нейротизм, определяют удовлетворенность человека жизнью. Однако когнитивные факторы удовлетворенности жизнью редко становятся предметом эмпирических исследований. В настоящем исследовании в качестве предикторов удовлетворенности жизнью на поздних этапах онтогенеза наряду с показателями когнитивного функционирования личности (когнитивная гибкость, память - краткосрочная и долгосрочная, креативность и мышление) использовались такие объективные показатели, как возраст, социальный статус (работает, не работает, на пенсии), тип семьи (нуклеарная или расширенная). В исследовании приняли участие девяносто семь респондентов в возрасте от 50 до 84 лет. Анализ полученных данных показал, что не только некогнитивные факторы, но и когнитивные оказывают существенное влияние на удовлетворенность жизнью в пожилом возрасте. На основе полученных данных была построена эмпирическая модель когнитивных факторов удовлетворенности жизнью. Показано, что все когнитивные переменные (гибкость мышления, долговременная память, кратковременная память, мышление и креативность) имеют положительный вклад в повышение удовлетворенности при ведущей роли долговременной памяти и креативности. Исследование выявило, что степень удовлетворенности значительно выше у работающих пожилых респондентов, чем у их неработающих коллег, при этом наиболее удовлетворенными являются самые пожилые сотрудники (средний возраст этой группы - 76 лет). Семейное положение также является фактором удовлетворенности жизнью в пожилом возрасте. Согласно полученным результатам, пожилые люди, живущие с супругом/супругой и отдельно от детей, более удовлетворены жизнью по сравнению со своими сверстниками, живущими в расширенных семьях с детьми и внуками. Регрессионная модель, построенная с учетом, как характеристик личности, так и переменных, отражающих объективные аспекты жизни пожилых людей, объединила переменные из восходящих и нисходящих теорий. В результирующую модель (коэффициент детерминации R² = 94,6 %) были включены переменные с коэффициентами на уровне значимости а < 0,05. Остальные переменные были исключены из результирующей модели. В нее вошли память и возраст как индивидуальные особенности и тип семьи как внешний предиктор удовлетворенности жизнью в пожилом возрасте.

Ключевые слова: удовлетворенность жизнью, старость, когнитивные процессы, нисходящие теории, восходящие теории, предикторы удовлетворенности жизнью

Introduction

Life satisfaction and the prospect to age well are important for everyone. In recent decades numerous empirical researches have been directed at clarifying the level of its stability across lifespan and at identifying of relevant its predictors as well.

The stability of life satisfaction. The earliest works on stability of life satisfaction find that old age is not necessarily associated with a decrease in the latter (Lawton, 1975; Neugarten et al., 1961). More recent work has shown that there are even some benefits that appear with age (Charles et al., 2001; Diener, Suh, 1997; Mroczek, Kolarz, 1998; An, Cooney, 2006; Freund, Baltes, 2002; Holahan et al., 2008).

The most extensive information was obtained in Gallup World Poll Life Satisfaction study. This study was conducted in 160 countries and covered 98% of the world's population. Results found that in rich English-speaking countries, the relationship between life satisfaction and age is U-shaped with a minimum at 45-54 years of age. However, this result is not universal. For example, no U-shaped pattern was found in the study conducted in England, Germany, and Australia (Stone et al., 2010). In Eastern Europe and Latin America, life satisfaction decreases with age, while in sub-Saharan Africa life satisfaction does not change with age (Step- toe et al., 2015).

The main theory that explains how life satisfaction can increase despite declining health and income is the theory of social and emotional selectivity (Carstensen et al., 2003). It is assumed that while aging, a person accumulates emotional wisdom which leads to the choice of more emotionally safe events, the establishment of emotionally neutral friendships. Thus, despite the death of loved ones, loss of social status associated with retirement, deterioration of health and reduced income, the level of life satisfaction remains and even increases among older people.

The decline in life satisfaction in middle age is explained by economic theory. Middle age is the period in a person's life when income, as a rule, reaches the maximum level. This is the best time to work and earn money even at the expense of own psychological well-being during this period. All this is done in order to have a higher level of well-being and well-being in later life (Steptoe et al., 2015).

Although the results of life satisfaction stability studies are sometimes ambivalent, in general they suggest that the older generation, even less healthy and, in general, less productive, may be more satisfied with their lives compared to middle-aged one.

The question why some people are more satisfied with their lives than others is connected with the other research branch - with the one which aims to study predictors of life satisfaction. There are two main types of theories about life satisfaction: top-down and bottom up.

Bottom-up theories state that life satisfaction is a result of satisfaction in the many domains of life. The underlying idea is that life satisfaction is equal to the sum of pleasant and unpleasant experiences and life circumstances' conditions (Campbell et al., 1976). Most studies use this approach.

Numerous studies have shown that cultural context can be a factor of life satisfaction (Diener, Suh, 2000; Kitayama, Markus, 2000; Uchida et al., 2004). For Hofstede (1980), in individualist cultures, one is regarded as separated from others, with personal goals taking priority over group goals. In collectivistic cultures, one is seen as connected to others, he/she is an integral part of a society in which group norms take priority over personal needs (Markus, Kitayama, 1991). Accordingly, life satisfaction in independent cultures is associated with high level of autonomy (Oishi, 2000) and personal achievements (Uchida, Kitayama, 2009), with self-esteem (Diener E., Diener M., 1995; Diene, Suh, 2000), self-confidence and motivation (Kitayama, Markus, 2000). Social harmony (Kang et al., 2003; Uchida, Kitayama, 2009), close family ties (Oishi, Diener, 2001), and emotional support from significant others (Uchida et al., 2008) are the key to life satisfaction in collectivist cultures.

A number of other factors of life satisfaction in old age have been revealed. In Berg's study social network quality, self-rated overall health, sense of being in control of one's life, and depressive symptoms were significantly associated with life satisfaction in individuals 80+ (Berg et al., 2009).

The importance of satisfaction from relationships with the closest family (a spouse, children, grandchildren) has been shown as a predictor of life satisfaction for elderly in Poland (Kozerska, 2015). Health self-assessment as an important factor of life satisfaction has been revealed for elderly population in Sweden, Austria and Germany (Kutubaeva, 2019).

The primacy of health as the determinant of life satisfaction among the oldest old in China has been shown in the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey (n = 6530) (Ng et al., 2017).

The significance of health as a predictor of life satisfaction has been shown for Indian sample as well (Choudhary, 2013). The findings reveal that there is consistent relationship between life satisfaction and health. Health was revealed as a factor of life satisfaction in South Korea, but economic condition was the most influential factor (Jung, Mankyu, 2010). Summarizing the results of determinants of life satisfaction in old age, it can be stated that the list of variables under study is rather long (education, place of residence: city vs. town, regular physical activity, access to social security provisions, etc.) but good health, lack of money problems and social support are the strongest correlates of life satisfaction.

On the other hand, top-down theories state that person's overall life satisfaction influences his/her our life satisfaction in the many different domains (Eid, Diener, 2004; Heller et al., 2004). Such personal traits as extraversion and neuroticism determine the level of life satisfaction (Costa, McCrae, 1980). Psychological capital (optimism, resilience and self-efficacy) and positive attitude towards aging have been found to be positively associated with psychological capital (Pramanik, Biswal, 2020).

Preserved cognitive functioning is commonly considered an important part of life satisfaction in old age (Jones et al., 2003). At the same time it should be noted, however, that life satisfaction as a function of cognitive aging is rarely the subject of research in this subject area (Belovol et al., 2015).

Aging is an irreversible biological process that results in an inevitable decrease in effectiveness of cognitive functions. We often hear that older people complain about memory, attention, and draw attention to the fact that they are increasingly struggling to learn new skills. This fact, as a rule, is experienced by a person quite hard and results in a number of negative emotions. Awareness of the deficit of one's own cognitive functioning cannot but influence the degree of life satisfaction.

The objectives of the study were to find cognitive predictors of life satisfaction and to study the effect of different types of variables on life satisfaction among the Russian elderly.

Method

Sample. In total, the study involved 97 participants aged between 50 and 84 years. At the time of the study, 58% of them were employed and 42% were retired. Each age group included both employed and retired respondents.

Procedure. The participants were recruited on a voluntary basis, using snowball sampling methods. All the researchers were qualified psychologists (with at least a BA degree in psychology); they were instructed to invite people of different ages and social backgrounds to participate. To collect data, they visited the participants at their homes. The sessions lasted 1.5-2 hours including testing and breaks. Cognitive tests required concentration and vigilance, so they were administered within the first hour. It usually took 3-4 sessions to collect all the data. The participants were asked to complete the Life Satisfaction inventory as well. All the participants (N = 97) freely agreed to answer the questionnaires and tests, and gave informed consent.

Life satisfaction. The Life Satisfaction Index (Neugarten et al., 1961) was used in a Russian-language adaptation (Panina, 1993). The original 20-item Life Satisfaction Index-A consists of statements related to life satisfaction in old age such as: “As I grow older, things seem better than I thought they would be” or “When I think back over my life, I didn't get most of the important things I wanted”. A three-point Likert scale was used. The participants rated each statement from “agree” to “do not agree”. The sum of the scale ranged from 0 to 40, with higher scores indicating greater life satisfaction.

To explain the features of life satisfaction, the following variables were used: age, social status (employed, unemployed, retired), family type (nuclear or extended), and a number of indices of cognitive functioning: cognitive flexibility, memory (short-term and long-term), creativity and thinking.

Age was presented in years (average = 64.1, standard deviation = 8.5). Social status reflected the fact whether a person was employed or retired. Family type concerned the characteristics of personal life: whether a respondent lived with a spouse in a nuclear family, or the parents lived together with their children, or sometimes even with their grandchildren. Some of the participants lived alone.

Cognitive flexibility, i.e. the ability to switch from one cognitive strategy to another, was studied using The Stroop Color and Word Test. The test can be used for individuals in a wide age range (from 15 to 90), it is easy to perform and is one of the standard tools for neuropsychological diagnostics: it is used to assess brain dysfunction, features of cognitive functioning and various types of psychopathologies.

Short-term memory was studied using a test developed by Japanese researchers to study the memory of elderly people; it consists of two almost identical pictures, which, however, differ in 10 features: the task is to identify these differences (Nishiguchi et al., 2014).

Long-term memory was assessed using The Mini-Cog technique. The technique includes a task for memorizing and reproducing three words with a masking stimulus between the presentation of words and their reproduction.

The Understanding of Metaphorical Meaning Test by B.V. Zeigarnik was used to study thinking. The method is aimed at identifying the respondent's abilityto highlight the main idea in a phrase of a specific content, as well as to identify the differentiation and purposefulness of judgments.

Creativity was studied by means of the “circles” subtest from The Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking.

Results

The above techniques allowed us to study the features of cognitive functioning and levels of life satisfaction in elderly. Figure 1 shows the density trace curve for life satisfaction indices.