Langer

1
Langer Rodin (1976)

• CHOICE having options available
• Tends to lead to greater happiness and even
  greater health!
• Unfortunately, elderly people often LOSE a lot of
  choice.

2
Langer Rodin (1976)

• Wanted to see if increasing choices for elderly
  would bring them more happiness/health.
• Setting Nursing home
• Participants the residents on two different
  floors (who were judged to be similar to each
  other before the study began)

3
Langer Rodin (1976)

• Procedure Each floor was read a statement that
  said the home wanted to help the residents have
  better lives in the home
• Responsibility-induced group of residents was
  given a lot of say in how to achieve these goals
• Control was pretty much told that the home would
  make these decisions

4
Langer Rodin (1976)

• Important to know Actually, both groups really
  had the same ability to make own decisions.
  However, this point was not reiterated to the
  control group!
• So, the difference between the groups is whether
  each believed they had control over own lives or
  not.

5
Langer Rodin (1976)

• How to test for outcome
• 1. residents were given surveys on satisfaction
  and perceived control
• 2. Staff were asked to rate residents on
  happiness, activity levels, sociability, etc.
• 3. Staff also recorded what activities the
  residents were doing surveys
• STAFF WERE BLIND AS TO CONDITION OF RESIDENTS!

6
Langer Rodin (1976)

• Results in all measures, responsibility-induced
  group rated higher than controls!
• Implications This is easy! It is helpful to give
  people more control!

7
Follow-up Langer Rodin (1977)

• They returned 18 months later and found that the
  beneficial effects were still occurring
• AND many more people had died in the control
  group than in the responsibility-induced group!

8
More Follow-ups

• Other studies have shown that IF responsibility
  is given to elderly residents, it must NOT be
  taken away or else the residents do much worse
  than if they never had control to begin with!
• Called a CONTRAST EFFECT (very common effect in
  life)
• Langer Rodin were very influential in the new
  field of GERENTOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY