Aging and The Sense of Self

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Aging and The Sense of Self

• A review of a research article
• -Dan McKinnon

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Review critique of

• Troll, L. E. McKean M. (1997). Perceived
  continuity of self in very old age. Psychology
  and Aging, Vol. 12, No. 1, 162-169.
• Who am I now? Speculations on how the aging
  brain affects an elders sense of self.

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But first, a thought experiment

• The Ship of Theseus
• Imagine this.
• Thinking about What is self ? Its a perennially
  persistent problem.....

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Purpose rationale of the study

• Implement a novel approach to investigating
  change in self vs. continuity of self in late
  life.
• How? Interviewed very old individuals (85yrs.).
• Not personality traits, but a descriptive
  approach.
• Asked, how have you changed or stayed the same?

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The Literature Review

• What is Self?
• Too brief, too sketchy
• Most writers focus on the self-concept,
  self-esteem, or the self in a reflective,
  subjective manner.
• OR, personality traits.

• Missed noting the deficiencies in those
  approaches.
• Needed a critical evaluation of recent
  psychological conceptions of self, For instance..

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Three recent notions of self,

• Labouvie-Vief (1995) the self is not unitary,
  conscious-rational and integrated, BUT,
• a set of processes, multiple and situated.
• Gergen (1991) there is no self-knowledge at
  all, just a collage of socially conditioned
  interpretations.
• Nesser (1988) there are five kinds of
  self-knowledge and they are 12.3.45.

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Troll Skaffs definition of self is

• Derived from William James and George Herbert
  Mead.
• And it is a duplex notion of self
• with the I, the self as observer, AND
• with the me, the self as the observations of
  that observer.

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Sound familiar?

• They didnt admit it, but they borrowed a very
  famous dictum of self from...

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Rene Descartes (1641/1960)

• You remember?
• I think, therefore I am.
• Its dualism from here on.

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BUT, operationally defining, What is self?,
thats tough to do.

• They deserve credit for focusing on
• the self as a self-perceived continuity in the
  sameness of the person, The I, OR
• the self-perceived continuity in the persons
  self attributes, The me.

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In their study Troll Skaff also relate self
perceptions to

• Recent upsetting events,
• current social resources,
• physical mental well-being,
• and mortality

• Although they do not state it as such..

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..Troll Skaffs implicit null hypothesis is

• There is little empirical evidence for either
  continuity or change in identity in very late
  life.

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Method

• So how did they do it?

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They drew a random sample of

• 150 caucasian men (25) and women (75) over the
  age of 85
• All participants lived in the community and50 of
  them lived alone
• Interviewed as to their.
• willingness to participate and if they were
• competent enough to respond

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The Interviews

• 6 interviews in total over a 7 year period
• In-depth, focused interview format
• Only interviews at Time 1 Time 3 dealt with
  perceptions of self-continuity
• 30 months lapsed between T-1 T-2

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30 months, how did the sample change? A weakness?

• 19 died, 9 became too impaired and 11 declined
  to participate or moved
• Dropout 150 to 90 participants
• Did the sample remain representative of the
  population?
• Troll Skaff claimed that their were no major
  differences

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Another concern or weakness that Troll Skaff
overlooked was

• No attempt was made to control for any possible
  research participant effects
• A participants need for positive
  self-presentation can distort things

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The Questions

• Questions about either.
• The persons sense of being the same essential
  person (I)
• and The persons observations of particular
  aspects of his/her being (me)

• Questions about.
• Recent, disruptive and upsettting events in the
  last year
• Current social resources
• Physical and mental well-being
• Thoughts of mortality

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Scoring the responses ?

• 3no change, 2some change
• 1slight change, 0ambiguous answer
• Both authors scored the responses independently
  and then discussed them until a consensus was
  reached.
• Discrepancies between ratings were consistently
  within 1 point.
• Overall the questions ratings seemed
  appropriate and well done.

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Results

• Reported in a systematic and detailed manner
• Good use of tables/charts to display their results

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Results, continued...

• Time 1
• 74 of participants perceived a clear continuity
  of self on the subjective feeling of self or the
  I dimension
• Consistent with the literature

• Time 3
• 92 of participants perceived a clear continuity
  of self on the I dimension.

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Results continued.

• Time 1
• 77 of the participants pereived themselves as
  QUITE DIFFERENT on the content of self or the
  me dimension

• Time 3
• 60 perceived themselves as QUITE DIFFERENT on
  the me dimension
• Using t-tests for paired differences these
  results are stat.sig (p lt.001)

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Results continued...

• None of the other potential correlates
• ... not recent upsetting events, not current
  social resources, not physical or mental
  well-being, not thoughts of mortality
• ... displayed a stat.sig. relationship with
  perceived continuity of self.

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Discussion

• Their discussion of the findings was informative
  and well integrated with the literature review.

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Key points in the discussion

• Elders (85 yr.) retain a coherent sense of self
  ( The I dimension) over time.
• 80 of these elders felt that some of their
  self-attributes (The me dimension) did indeed
  change.
• Elders are able to readily assimilate these
  changes into their core self, the I or observer
  self.

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Key points continued.

• Intriguing that disruptive events did not affect
  their continuous sense of self.
• Elders have an aura of survivorship
• The I - me distinction is a useful way to
  understand how elders can describe themselves as
  essentially the same.

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Conclusion

• Even among the oldest old, then, there seems to
  be a sense that although the mirror might tell a
  different story, the person inside is still the
  same.

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Some alternate explanations?

• Sense of self as overlapping memories.
• Sense of self as a bundle of perceptions.
• Sense of self as a narrative structure and story.
• THOUGHT EXPERIMENT 2
• The Heap Problem