Key Terms

Personal fable: Teenagers secretly imagine their lives as fantastical stories of greatness and distinction.
Midlife stagnation: Maturation expected for dispositional traits, goals, and narrative identity never really happens.
Despair: An older person rejects their own life as something that has not been good or worthy and they are filled with regrets and recriminations.
Ego integrity: An older person accepts one’s life as having been a worthwhile endeavour. Shifts the focus from author to reader
Alzheimer's: Disease that destroys the material out of which narrative identity is to be made, undermining the author’s fundamental reason for being
Sense of an ending: functions to shape how stories unfold and how characters’ lives develop in good fiction
Successful aging: fulfilling, attainment of wisdom
Dementia: eventually strips away the episodic memory upon which the narrative self is built
Theory of socioemotional selectivity: theory that claims that when people experience a shorter time perspective for the future, they focus on keeping hold of those people and experiences that are most near and dear

Researchers - Theories

Long-term planning skills erode in the later years
Personality stability may decline in the later years of life
People may reverse the gains they have made on positive personality traits
The strong rank-order continuity of traits begins to break down in the last years, reversing a lifelong trend
Negative emotional states increase with age
After age 75, there are rising levels of N and sharp increases in N have been shown to predict mortality
Advanced aging brings with it a substantial decline in coping skills and mechanisms for defending against anxiety
Older adults tend to recall fewer vivid details from their past

The concept of adult generativity has sometimes been seen as an artful and creative response to mortality
Ego integrity shifts the older person’s focus somewhat from author to reader
The final chapters in people’s lives are as varied as there are people on the earth
In the final chapter of life, what matters most in the story is relationships
As people age, their goals are more about maintaining their health and staying close to the people they love
Social support can go a long way in dampening the negative effects of aging
The actor, agent and author live together in one personality; not as separate selves but as 3 different psychological perspectives from which the self considers itself
As people age, traits related to self-regulation (C + A) may begin to decline
We begin life as social actors, performing in the group and being relentlessly social until the last moment, where we die alone

Personal fable: Teenagers secretly imagine their lives as fantastical stories of greatness and distinction.
Midlife stagnation: Maturation expected for dispositional traits, goals, and narrative identity never really happens.
Despair: An older person rejects their own life as something that has not been good or worthy and they are filled with regrets and recriminations.
Ego integrity: An older person accepts one’s life as having been a worthwhile endeavour. Shifts the focus from author to reader
Alzheimer's: Disease that destroys the material out of which narrative identity is to be made, undermining the author’s fundamental reason for being
Sense of an ending: functions to shape how stories unfold and how characters’ lives develop in good fiction
Successful aging: fulfilling, attainment of wisdom
Dementia: eventually strips away the episodic memory upon which the narrative self is built
Theory of socioemotional selectivity: theory that claims that when people experience a shorter time perspective for the future, they focus on keeping hold of those people and experiences that are most near and dear

Long-term planning skills erode in the later years
Personality stability may decline in the later years of life
People may reverse the gains they have made on positive personality traits
The strong rank-order continuity of traits begins to break down in the last years, reversing a lifelong trend
Negative emotional states increase with age
After age 75, there are rising levels of N and sharp increases in N have been shown to predict mortality
Advanced aging brings with it a substantial decline in coping skills and mechanisms for defending against anxiety
Older adults tend to recall fewer vivid details from their past

The concept of adult generativity has sometimes been seen as an artful and creative response to mortality
Ego integrity shifts the older person’s focus somewhat from author to reader
The final chapters in people’s lives are as varied as there are people on the earth
In the final chapter of life, what matters most in the story is relationships
As people age, their goals are more about maintaining their health and staying close to the people they love
Social support can go a long way in dampening the negative effects of aging
The actor, agent and author live together in one personality; not as separate selves but as 3 different psychological perspectives from which the self considers itself
As people age, traits related to self-regulation (C + A) may begin to decline
We begin life as social actors, performing in the group and being relentlessly social until the last moment, where we die alone