Whereas sharing a life with someone with high cynical hostility can be straining, little is known about how partner's cynical hostility is associated with one's mental health. In this paper, we report the findings from a longitudinal dyadic study using two waves of a large and representative American sample of older adults and their spouses to examine how one's own and their spouse's cynical hostility longitudinally affect anxiety and depressive symptoms. Results from APIM analyses suggest that both husbands' and wives' anxiety and depressive symptoms were negatively associated with their own cynical hostility, both within each time point and longitudinally.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDeath and loss are often uncomfortable topics for adults to discuss with young children. Disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, however, made the avoidance of these topics nearly impossible. The current study explored how 20 parents engaged with their young children (ages 3-6) in discussions about death, dying, and loss as they jointly experienced this global crisis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAttention should be devoted to the accessibility of campus facilities to older adults and as a means to increase age-diversity. In this paper, we sought to uncover older adults' perceptions of campus accessibility via an online survey. Participants were recruited through local newsletters, and word of mouth, and included 81 community members ( Age = 71.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGuided by family communication patterns theory and terror management theory this mixed-methods investigation explored how parents ( = 112) of young children (ages 3-6) described the way they would discuss death when it comes up in conversations. Responses were coded inductively, resulting in four themes: explanations that death is inevitable, explanations that death is in the distance, the use of religion to frame discussions of death, and finally, discussing afterlife connections to deceased family members. Logistic regression analyses were used to evaluate whether parents' conformity or conversation orientations were associated with the frequency with which parents discussed death with their child and the content of parent vignette responses.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: The present study examines the moderating role of social connectedness (i.e. closeness, talk frequency, social network size, and neighborhood social ties) in the association between one's own and spouse's relationship strain and emotional well-being (i.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe present study examines participant attitudes regarding whether a victim of IPV should forgive an offending partner and whether they should stay or leave a violent relationship. A total of 562 participants completed the study, which entailed responding to factorial vignettes online. Participants were primarily heterosexual, female, non-Latino, and White, with an average age of 21.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe present study explores the role of marital histories in how older women navigate their friendships and how they provide care for, receive care from, and help friends. Nineteen semi-structured interviews with older women (mean age = 75.89) were conducted.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Gerontol B Psychol Sci Soc Sci
January 2021
Objectives: Cynical hostility is a cognitive schema according to which people cannot be trusted, and it has associations with individuals' loneliness. The present study takes a dyadic approach to examine whether cynical hostility is related to one's own and their spouse's loneliness. We further explore whether friendship factors serve as a mediator between individuals' and spouses' cynical hostility and loneliness.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Interpers Violence
January 2022
This mixed methods study analyzed individual attitudes regarding how the gender of an aggressor, levels of aggression (i.e., slapping, punching, or threatening with a weapon), and alcohol consumption (i.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHow loneliness manifests in older adult married couples is necessary to consider. Marriage partners may become more or less lonely based on shared circumstances with one another (i.e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGerontol Geriatr Educ
November 2021
Performing arts interventions may be one method to lessen age stereotypes among both the young and old. The present study examines how, and if, intergenerational performing arts interventions addressing age increases knowledge on ageism and counters ageist stereotypes. Two programs were assessed, one with a discussion component and the other without.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLoneliness is a mechanism through which marital quality relates to older adults' mental health. Links between marital quality, loneliness, and depressive symptoms, however, are often examined independent of older adults' functional health. The current study therefore examines whether associations between marital quality, loneliness, and depressive symptoms are contextually dependent on individuals' own (or their spouse's) functional limitations, as well as on gender.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe present study investigates the association between social connectedness (i.e., social network characteristics, family and friend support, and social ties with neighbors), emotional well-being, and self-rated health and whether these associations differ based on respondents' relationship status among adults aged 62 and older.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn this mixed methods study, we explored how gender of an aggressor and the levels of aggression (i.e., yelling, throwing a drink, slapping, and punching) influenced attitudes about (a) public displays of intimate partner violence (IPV) and (b) bystander intervention.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Gerontol B Psychol Sci Soc Sci
March 2018
Objectives: The present study examines the association between formal volunteering and cognitive functioning over time. We also examine the moderating roles of race, sex, education, and time.
Method: Using 11,100 participants aged 51 years and older and nine waves of data from the Health and Retirement Survey, we simultaneously modeled the longitudinal associations between engaging in formal volunteering and changes in cognitive functioning using multilevel models.
Aging Ment Health
October 2016
Objectives: Feeling unforgiven by others has been linked to poor health outcomes. The current study examined whether feeling unforgiven by others is associated with depression and self-rated health among older adults in the United States. The potential moderating roles of forgiving others and self-forgiveness in the association between unforgiveness and both depression and self-rated health was also assessed along with gender differences.
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