title: Adapting to Aging: Older People Talk About Their Use of Selection, Optimization, and Compensation to Maximize Well-being in the Context of Physical Decline.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Selection, Optimization, and Compensation (SOC) may contribute to successful aging by helping older people maximize well-being in the context of physical decline. To explore this hypothesis, and to investigate the potential for narrative analysis to improve understanding of SOC, we analyze interviews conducted with 15 members of the 6-Day Sample, a cohort of Scots born in 1936.
  
  
  METHODS
  Interviewees were chosen based on their physical function and well-being scores. Interviews were analyzed to investigate "SOC talk," that is, older people's talk about SOC behaviors in everyday life. Types and amounts of SOC talk were quantified, and talk was narratively analyzed. We hypothesized that older people who engaged in more SOC talk would have higher well-being.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Older people who engaged in high levels of SOC talk had high well-being despite low physical function. Those who engaged in little SOC talk had low well-being despite higher physical function.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The concept of successful aging is valuable in part because of its narrative quality: One must strive to keep one's life story developing despite physical decline and other losses. We provide evidence, from the perspectives of older people themselves, of the ways in which SOC may play a role in that process.
authors.affiliation: UCL Institute of Education, London, UK.
authors.forename: J D
authors.initials: JD
authors.lastname: Carpentieri
authors.affiliation: UCL Institute of Education, London, UK.
authors.forename: Jane
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Elliott
authors.affiliation: Liverpool John Moores University, UK.|MRC-BBSRC Centre for Cognitive Ageing and Cognitive Epidemiology, Department of Psychology, University of Edinburgh, UK.
authors.forename: Caroline E
authors.initials: CE
authors.lastname: Brett
authors.affiliation: MRC-BBSRC Centre for Cognitive Ageing and Cognitive Epidemiology, Department of Psychology, University of Edinburgh, UK.
authors.forename: Ian J
authors.initials: IJ
authors.lastname: Deary
mesh_terms: D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000368:Aged; D000375:Aging / Q000523:psychology*; D015331:Cohort Studies; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008960:Models, Psychological; D063545:Personal Narratives as Topic; D010549:Personal Satisfaction; D036301:Qualitative Research; D012606:Scotland
keywords: Adaptation; Narrative; SOC; Successful aging; Well-being