Wisdom and Psychosocial Functioning in Later Life.

We investigated the connection between wisdom-related performance, personality, and generativity to further the understanding of how they are interrelated. Our sample consisted of 163 men and women 68-77 years of age, mostly White, and predominantly middle class. Wisdom was assessed with the performance-based Berlin Wisdom Paradigm, with the remaining measures being mostly self-report.

Fatigue of survivors following cardiac surgery: positive influences of preoperative prayer coping.

Objectives: Fatigue symptoms are common among individuals suffering from cardiac diseases, but few studies have explored longitudinally protective factors in this population. This study examined the effect of preoperative factors, especially the use of prayer for coping, on long-term postoperative fatigue symptoms as one aspect of lack of vitality in middle-aged and older patients who survived cardiac surgery.

Method: The analyses capitalized on demographics, faith factors, mental health, and on medical comorbidities previously collected via two-wave preoperative interviews and standardized information from the Society of Thoracic Surgeons' national database.

Secular reverence predicts shorter hospital length of stay among middle-aged and older patients following open-heart surgery.

This study explored the role of both traditional religiousness and of experiencing reverence in religious and secular (e.g., naturalistic, moralistic) contexts in postoperative hospital length of stay among middle-aged and older patients undergoing open-heart surgery.

Prayer and reverence in naturalistic, aesthetic, and socio-moral contexts predicted fewer complications following coronary artery bypass.

This prospective study explores prayer, reverence, and other aspects of faith in postoperative complications and hospital length of stay of patients undergoing coronary artery bypass graft surgery. Alongside traditional religiousness measures, we examined sense of reverence in religious and secular contexts. Face-to-face interviews were conducted with 177 patients 2 weeks before surgery at a medical center.

Religiousness, spiritual seeking, and personality: findings from a longitudinal study.

The hypothesis that personality characteristics in adolescence can be used to predict religiousness and spiritual seeking in late adulthood was tested using a structural equation modeling framework to estimate cross-lagged and autoregressive effects in a two-wave panel design. The sample consisted of 209 men and women participants in the Berkeley Guidance and Oakland Growth studies. In late adulthood, religiousness was positively related to Conscientiousness and Agreeableness, and spiritual seeking was related to Openness to Experience.

Does religiousness buffer against the fear of death and dying in late adulthood? Findings from a longitudinal study.

We used longitudinal data (N = 155) to investigate the relation between religiousness and fear of death and dying in late adulthood. We found no linear relations between religiousness and fear of death and dying. Individuals who were moderately religious feared death more than individuals who scored high or low on religiousness.

Gender differences in autobiographical memory styles of older adults.

Older adults provided oral life histories in a semi-structured interview format. The transcribed narratives were coded for the presence of specific, one-moment-in-time episodes. Participants differed systematically in the degree to which their narratives were marked by descriptions of specific events.

Religiousness, spirituality, and psychosocial functioning in late adulthood: findings from a longitudinal study.

This study used longitudinal data to examine the relations among religiousness, spirituality, and 3 key domains of psychosocial functioning in late adulthood: (a) sources of well-being, (b) involvement in tasks of everyday life, and (c) generativity and wisdom. Religiousness and spirituality were operationalized as distinct but overlapping dimensions of individual difference. In late adulthood, religiousness was positively related to well-being from positive relations with others, involvement in social and community life tasks, and generativity.