Well Being In Old Age

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Emotional experiences are the ones that most affect our lives, and that is why many of them are stored in long-term memory, providing the context with respect to which every new event related to an emotion is evaluated (Ebner and Fisher, 2014). Every single experience, then, not only stimulate a single emotional response but also some related emotions. The feature of old age is precisely the accumulation of many emotional experiences to which the mind draws. A further elaboration of this reflection would seem to uphold the popular conviction that with age people always see the positive side of bad things and the negative one of positive things. In fact, the elderly are exposed to a series of losses (spouse, health, decreased physical mobility)…show more content…
Recently, in order to answer to this question, researchers have attempted to follow two paths linked to the theories of common sense. They attribute the source of well-being to material resources of the individual, to his living conditions, or to his subjective experience of life. According to the first theory, an elderly person is in a state of well-being if he has an acceptable home, an easy access to social and health services, if he can maintain a close relationship with his family and perform social activities, if he has saved sufficient financial resources, and he has a good mental and physical health. The second approach identifies the well-being in the cognitive self-assessment of the individual, and in the emotional experiences had during his life. In this case, the individuals themselves set the criteria, and, for example, people who have had different experiences during their life, could interpret objectively equivalent living conditions differently. There have been several attempts to integrate the two theories. In fact, experiments have shown that, while most subjects report a good level of satisfaction for their current living conditions, older women, people over the age of 85, and those living in nursing homes, report less frequently those positive emotional experiences that are a key component of well-being. From the analysis, it has also emerged that subjective evaluations play a more important role in well-being than in objective conditions. These findings confirm Campbell's support in 1976. He states that the changes and losses accumulated throughout life by the elderly, limit the adaptation processes that make possible to get used to life's changes. For this reason, it is important to activate long-term welfare support measures, improving living conditions through technology development, policy interventions, and social

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