NOV 18

22: NOV 18

• Hall C4, “Emotional Regulation: The Art of Coping” (17)
• Carstensen, “The Influence of a Sense of Time…” (3)
• Ardelt, “How Wise People Cope with Crises and Obstacles” (11)

Hall, Chapter 4, "Emotional Regulation"

• Emotional regulation as a compensating strength of aging. Give basic argument for connecting emo reg to wisdom.

• Carstensen’s Stanford beeper study - longitudinal.

• "Carstensen and her colleagues have proposed that successful emotional regulation is tightly connected to a persons sense of time—usually, but not always, time as it is reflected by one's age and stage of life. "According to our theory, this isn't a quality of aging per se, but of time horizons," she explained. "When your time perspective shortens, as it does when you come closer to the ends of things, you tend to focus on emotionally meaningful goals. " 63

• SST: socioemotional selectivity theory (Cartensen's) “In shortening time span of later life, people focus on emotionally meaningful experience.

• Can/How can the benefits of this view become available to the young?

• Emotional Resilience: Job's emotional resilience. Is it patience or resilience? What is the diff? Note, Job does not suppress negative emotion, but bounces back to an equilibrium. “Surely, vexation kills the fool.” (Today’s heuristic!)

• problem in history of philosophy -- downplaying of emotion. But then Hume, and James' "What is an Emotion?"

• Gross: "reappraisal" and "reflection" as techniques of emotional regulation. vs. “rumination” 66. Very important! Note mechanism suggested for each. (Note connection to therapeutic writing. Possible topic for short research.) Notice this way of thinking suggests that emotional regulation is trainable. (Note Tim Wilson’s research in Redirect.)

• Cartensens' research in assisted living homes. “Have you seen what’s out there?…I don’t have time to talk to those people.” counterintuitive answers. (67) "time horizon" theory. Implications.

• Carstensen on the paradigmatic tasks of the young: "knowledge trajectory" (70); "collectors" 71, in older age, a shift from knowledge related goals to emotion-related goals.

• 71: neuroscience on learning from loss; affect forecasting (accuracy in predicting how we will feel. Could dampen negative emotion, right? Examples?) young as steep "discounters"; greater appetite for risk, less for ambiguity. (Probably don’t want to change that, but it describes a problem also.)

• 73: emotional resilience in Davidson's longitudinal neuroscience research: correlation of emotional regulation and brain pattern. (Brains that regulate emotion look diff in real time.) Gabrielli studies on young amygdalas. Gross on male/female emotional processing.

• positive illusion (optimism bias) - note that negative visualization might facilitate it, as in the Irvine point about the two fathers.

• "Grandparent hypothesis"

• Concluding Group Discussion: Is emotional regulation something that a young person could use to mimic the emotional regulative experience of older people? Is such a goal possible, desirable?

Carstensen, "The Influence of a Sense of Time on Human Development"

• Abstract: “The subjective sense of future time plays an essential role in human motivation. Gradually, time left becomes a better predictor than chronological age for a range of cognitive, emotional,and motivational variables. Socioemotional selectivity theory maintains that constraints on time horizons shift motivational priorities in such a way that the regulation of emotional states becomes more important than other types of goals. This motivational shift occurs with age but also appears in other contexts (for example, geographical relocations, illnesses, and war) that limit subjective future time.”

• The mechanism here 1913, col. 3: shortening time horizons affect goal selection, preferences, attention and memory.

• Comparisons of younger people with short time horizons (due to untreatable illness, for example) show parallel to older people. Likewise 1914, col 1, study showing manipulation of goal selection in older people who are told that they are going to live a lot longer.

• SST: two categories shift: motivation for knowledge acquisition and regulation of emotion. Shift from horizon expanding goals (like job training) to emotionally meaningful goals.

• Advertisement study. Amygdala study. NA/PA.

Summing up Wisdom Paradigms

• Expert Knowledge system (Baltes Wisdom Paradigm) - explicit
• Time-horizon theory (Socio-emotive Selection Theory - SST) - Carstensen - implicit
• 3D-WS (Ardelt's Cognitive-Reflective-Affective Theory of coping. - implicit

• All three of these involve studying people rated as wise (often older), seeing what they do, and trying to abstract that as a general method or lesson. I think it makes sense to say that when you do that you are making an implicit theory explicit.

Ardelt, “How Wise People Cope with Crises and Obstacles”

• Introduction

• Summarizing research field of 25 years, starting with Baltes. Note developments in 90s.
• interest in people who face "ultimate limit situations"
• 8: Some new language in the Baltes model -- not only individual decision making :

• Knowledge - application of tacit knowledge mediated by values
• Transformation of experience
• Dis-illusioning - seeing through illusions (not becoming disillusioned!) (self-deception avoidance)

• Follow her gloss of 3D-WS Table 1. and p. 8 col 3

• Study

• 180 older adults from diverse situations in Florida
• Construction/admin of 3D-WS. Selection of 12 high and 12 low wisdom as rated by scale
• Respondents give interviews that are structured, recorded, coded by trained judges, some blind to study goals.
• Selected three high and three low cases for discussion

• Results

• Coping strategies of high wisdom respondents

• 1. Mental distancing
• 2. Active coping

• Reframing: Making the best of things
• Taking control of a situation

• 3. Application of life lessons

• Learning from life experiences

• Coping strategies of low wisdom respondents

• 1. Passive coping

• Acceptance
• Reliance on God (passively)

• 2. Avoidance of reflection

• Small Group Discussion

• How attractive is Ardelt's 3D-WS model? Specifically, does it capture the cognitive, reflective, and affective dimensions of Wisdom? Are these the right basic dimensions? To what extent is it possible to model wisdom acquisition for all ages on the wisdom of older individuals rated high on wisdom?

SW3: Short Critical Paper (1000-1500 words)

• For this paper, use your real name. We will not run these through the peer review process, but you are welcome to share your papers with each other if you choose. Due TBD

• Topic A: Wisdom challenges & the Baltes Paradigm: Use one of the "wisdom challenges" from last class or write your own (perhaps based on a challenge you face currently or one which someone you know faces or faced). Using the Baltes paradigm (the BWP five dimensions), generate specific advice for meeting the challenge. Then assess the adequacy of the BWP. Were there aspects of a wise approach to the challenge that fell outside of the BWP5? Are there emotional aspects of the challenge that the BWP misses?

• Topic B: Emotional Regulation and Coping: Identify a "coping challenge" that either you or someone you know faces, or a hypothetical challenge. Then use resources from the Hall chapter on emotional regulation and Ardelt's 3D-WS and coping strategies of wise people to distinguish more or less wise ways of coping with that challenge.