BASE-Publications: Abstracts

Staudinger, U. M., Freund, A. M., Linden, M., & Maas, I. (1999). Self, personality, and life regulation: Facets of psychological resilience in old age. In P. B. Baltes & K. U. Mayer (Eds.), The Berlin Aging Study: Aging from 70 to 100 (pp. 302-328). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

The goal of this chapter is twofold. First, this chapter describes various aspects of self and personality in old age (personality characteristics, self-definitions, experience of time, personal life investment, coping styles, affect) and relates them to individuals' satisfaction with their own aging. Second, based on a model of psychological resilience in old age, we examine whether these aspects of self and personality are protective of aging satisfaction (on a correlational level) in the face of somatic or socioeconomic risks. Taken together, our results indicate that the self and personality involve processes and characteristics that help to maintain or minimize the loss of aging satisfaction in the presence of somatic and socioeconomic risk factors. On a correlational level, we observe different adaptive profiles for socioeconomic and somatic risks.