Newswise,
March 9, 2016 — A new study reveals that individuals in their 60s who give
advice to a broad range of people tend to see their lives as especially
meaningful.
At the same time, this happens to be the age when opportunities for
dispensing advice become increasingly scarce.
According
to the study, which appears in the March issue of Social Psychology
Quarterly, individuals in their 60s who report giving advice to a wide
variety of people—to family members, friends, neighbors, and strangers—see
their lives as highly meaningful, while adults in that age group who dispense
advice to fewer types of people are much less likely to report high life
meaning.
“This
association between advice giving and life meaning is not evident for other age
groups,” said Markus H. Schafer, an assistant professor of sociology at the
University of Toronto and the lead author of the study.
“Overall,
we interpret these findings to suggest that the developmental demands of late
midlife—particularly the desire to contribute to others’ welfare and the fear
of feeling ‘stagnant’—fit poorly with the social and demographic realties for
this segment of the life course. Just when giving advice seems to be most
important, opportunities for doing so seem to wane.”
Titled,
“The Age-Graded Nature of Advice: Distributional Patterns and Implications for
Life Meaning,” the study relies on a nationally representative sample of 2,583
U.S. adults who were 18 and above when they were surveyed in 2006.
Schafer
and his co-author Laura Upenieks, a doctoral candidate in sociology at the
University of Toronto, found that 21 percent of people in their 60s and 27
percent of people 70 or older reported giving advice to no one in the previous
year.
By
comparison, only about 10 percent of people in their 20s (this group also
included 18 and 19-year-olds), 30s, 40s, and 50s said they gave no advice in
the past year.
“Conventional
age norms suggest that the ideal mentor or advice-giver is someone who has a
lot of life experience,” Schafer said.
“However,
compared to their younger counterparts, older adults occupy fewer social roles,
are less socially active, and interact with a more restricted range of people.
So, while the average 65-year-old may well have more wisdom than the average
30-year-old, demographic and social structure factors seem to provide the
latter with more opportunity for actually dispensing advice.”
Some
scholars have argued that the essence of mattering—the idea that one is
meaningful and consequential to other people—is most under threat during late-middle
age when many people retire and enter the “empty nest” phase of life, according
to Schafer.
“The
mattering perspective helps explain why it is this period of the life span, in
particular, when it is important for people to feel like they can still have
influence on others through actions such as giving advice,” Schafer said.
In terms
of the study’s implications, Schafer said, “The results should prompt
reflection on the social fabric of American communities and how late-middle age
adults fit into the picture. Our findings underscore the importance of giving
older adults occasions to share their wisdom and life experiences.
Schools,
churches, civic organizations, and other community groups could consider how to
facilitate intergenerational mentorship experiences and to creatively enable
more older adults to be advice-givers.”
About the American
Sociological Association and Social Psychology Quarterly
The American Sociological Association (www.asanet.org), founded in 1905, is a non-profit membership association dedicated to serving sociologists in their work, advancing sociology as a science and profession, and promoting the contributions to and use of sociology by society.Social Psychology Quarterly is a quarterly, peer-reviewed journal of the ASA.
The
research article described above is available by request for members of the
media. For a copy of the full study, contact Daniel Fowler, ASA Media Relations
Manager, at (202) 527-7885 or pubinfo@asanet.org.
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