Better With Age: The Psychology of Successful Aging by Dr. Alan D. Castel

Author:Dr. Alan D. Castel [Castel, Alan D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Psychology, Cognitive Psychology & Cognition, Neuropsychology, Social Psychology, Medical, Nursing, Gerontology, Developmental, Adulthood & Aging
ISBN: 9780190280000
Google: g2BmDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2018-08-01T05:10:25.941152+00:00

Competition Can Fuel Us: Compete against a Friend, Yourself, or Your Age Group

People often enjoy a little friendly competition, even when it may simply involve competing against themselves. Competition can motivate people at any age. We often make social comparisons, comparing ourselves to others in our social class, in terms of jobs, income, and other forms of productivity or levels of happiness. We also make personal comparisons—I weigh more now than I did 10 years ago, and I would like to lose weight; I don’t run as fast as I used to, but I would now to like to run a marathon with a friend. We can also compare ourselves to our parents at the same age and set goals of being like them, or not, in order to achieve health. While many people engage in activities for their sheer pleasure or enjoyment, often we need a goal or some friendly competition to motivate us.

Today, there are many ways we can set goals coupled with technology, such as measuring how fast we run, or heart rates, and the number of steps we take a day. Right now, I can run faster than my children, although I still sometimes let them win. But there will come a time in my life when they will run faster than me—and this is a good thing. We should not always compete against our younger selves or counterparts but rather our current cohort, and we should only seek maintenance or improvement in our own ability when using our current selves as a comparison. Albert Bandura, the famous Stanford University social psychologist who studies self-efficacy, told me that when training for a marathon, we should compare ourselves to others in the same age range, not self-comparisons to our younger selves. Winning within your age group in a running race is a more realistic and meaningful goal than trying to win the entire race. He suggests we also should have some balance and engage in activities that we enjoy; he says he now spends a lot of time gardening and growing tomatoes. He said that he feels he is doing pretty well for his age, considering that he is now over 90.

It’s only natural that we make social and personal comparisons. Often, older adults will say that their memory isn’t as good as it used to be, but on the whole, they’re doing pretty well compared to their friends of the same age group. In general, the best comparison may be to others in your own age cohort, and not against a younger generation. One reason computer-based brain training is popular is that it provides these types of comparisons. Brain training can sometimes take advantage of this by giving feedback about how well you are doing compared to people your own age, and also possibly reducing your brain age, sometimes even giving some estimate of your current “mental age.” We would like to feel younger, or perhaps have our memory function like it did 20 years ago.

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