[Stress and aging. A counter-cultural development of locus of control and coping behavior in the elderly].
Large international comparative surveys showed that study of intra-cultural differences and of their modifications with aging could be a fertile way to understand the influence of culture on psychological processes. People who attribute what happens to them to internal and controllable causes use more coping strategies focused on the problem than people who put forward external causes. Results obtained on child and adult in occidental societies showed dominant tendencies towards the norm of internality and coping focused on problem solving. We assumed the converse hypothesis of a decreasing belief in the internal control and a recentering coping behavior on emotional regulation in the elderly, which results in an increasing maladjustment to dominant intracultural tendencies. We studied 215 French elderly subjects with a French scale assessing the type l locus of control (internal versus external) through 7 sources of reinforcement and with the French validation of the Vitaliano et al. coping scale assessing the strategies of adaptation (focused on problem solving versus on emotional control). The results showed that advancing age, contrary to the main intracultural injunctions, was linked to an increasing belief in external factors regulating life events and with an emotion focused coping of avoidance type when facing a recent stress. Unlike to the continuous emphasis, in our individualistic cultures, on the adaptation of the world to the self involving problem solving, it is the adaptation of the self to the world by managing the feelings, characteristic of collectivist cultures, which seems gradually to prevail during aging and could contribute to difficulties in adjustment of the elderly.
Denoux
Patrick
P
UFR de psychologie, Unité de recherche de psychologie Interculturelle, (Cursep, EA 2089). Université de Toulouse 2, Clermont-Ferrand. denoux@univ-tlse2.fr
Macaluso
Gaëtan
G
D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000375:Aging / Q000523:psychology*; D003469:Culture; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007389:Internal-External Control; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000523:psychology*