Effects of “Environmental Chatter” about Age and Aging on Middle-Aged and Older Adults’ Communication and Perceptions of Aging Efficacy

Abstract

Grounded in the communicative ecology model of successful aging (CEMSA), this study examined how social messages individuals encounter about age predicted efficacy regarding aging. Data from N = 283 middle-aged and older American adults were analyzed via path analyses. Explicit messages about aging, the presence of positive and negative role models for aging, and the degree to which intergenerational interaction was experienced as accommodative and nonaccommodative predicted how participants themselves communicated about aging. Having positive role models and quality of intergenerational interaction also predicted self-reports of efficacy related to aging.

Keywords:

• Accommodation
• Intergenerational Communication
• Nonaccommodation
• Successful Aging
• Communicative Ecology Model of Successful Aging

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and the Editor for their thoughtful comments and feedback during the review process.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. This survey included additional measures not reported here. Data from this data set are also published in Gasiorek and Barile (2018); Gasiorek et al. (2019).

2. All analyses were run on the full sample (n = 283) and on middle-aged adults (i.e., adults aged 45–64, n = 270) only, as this age group comprised the majority of our sample. There were no differences in the overall pattern of results (i.e., significance of model paths) for these two sets of analyses. Results reported here are for the full sample.

3. Notably, this can be seen in both path model coefficients and in zero-order correlations (see Table 1), so it is not a statistical artifact of modeling.