Everyday Challenges in Context: The Influence of Contextual Factors on Everyday Problem Solving Among Young, Middle-Aged, and Older Adults

Abstract

The authors examined the experimental effects of social context on everyday problem–solving performance by older, middle-aged, and younger adults. Participants were presented with six everyday problems constructed by framing two behavioral challenges in social contexts representative of the lives of older, middle-aged, and younger adults. As predicted, participants performed best when problems were situated in contexts representative of their own age group. Older adults also outperformed the other age groups on problems set in older adult contexts, suggesting that when problems are set in ecologically relevant contexts, one may not observe previously reported age-related declines in performance.

The study was supported by a grant from the National Institute on Aging (R03AG023271-2). During the preparation of the manuscript, Daniele Artistico was supported by the Eugene Lang Foundation. The authors thank Justin Black and Ramona Krauss for assistance in participant recruitment and the conduct of the research. They also thank the anonymous experts who provided the solution quality ratings.

Notes

∗Higher scores indicate better health.

∗∗The older-adults group was a sample of relatively “young-older adults.” The age range was 60–87 but only 25.9% were older than 67 years old.

∗∗∗p < .001.

^a Young adults, middle-aged adults, and older adults.

^b Young adult problem, middle-aged adult problem, older adult problem.

^c Interpersonal versus instrumental.

^a Young adults, middle-aged adults, and older adults.

^b Young adult context, middle-aged adult context, and older adult context.