Accommodation from Romantic Partners as a Predictor of Older Adults’ Depressive Symptoms and Loneliness: The Moderating Roles of Own and Partner Future Time Perspectives

Abstract

Older adults’ perceptions of receiving accommodation from their romantic partner were examined as indirectly predicting depressive symptoms and loneliness, via shared family identity. Older adults’ assessments of their own future and their romantic partner’s future were also examined as moderators. For older adults who perceived their own future as restricted, perceptions of accommodation positively predicted shared family identity, and shared family identity then negatively predicted depressive symptoms. This indirect association was nonsignificant for older adults who perceived their own future as average in duration. Ways to continue probing the moderating role of future time perspective are offered.

Keywords:

• Communication Accommodation Theory
• Mental Health Difficulties
• Older Adults
• Romantic Relationships
• Socioemotional Selectivity Theory

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Dr. Johnson and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback on an earlier version of this paper.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Because the latent interaction variable was specified as the product of two latent factors, Mplus did not yield the chi-square test of model fit, comparative fit index (CFI), root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA), and standardized root mean square residual (SRMR) as the set of fit indices typically reported when running simpler structural equation models (with no latent interaction variable). Rather, Mplus yielded the log-likelihood, Akaike information criterion (AIC), Bayesian information criterion (BIC), and sample-size adjusted Bayesian information criterion (aBIC). Muthén (2012) and Muthén and Muthén (2017a) provide syntax templates for specifying structural models with latent interaction variables and a discussion of why these fit indices are reported.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Quinten S. Bernhold

Dr. Quinten S. Bernhold is an assistant professor in the School of Communication Studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. His research examines intergenerational communication and family communication.