Communication and successful aging: Testing alternative conceptualizations of uncertainty

ABSTRACT

The communicative ecology model of successful aging (CEMSA), which theorizes how people’s communication can influence their experiences of successful aging, takes as axiomatic that aging involves uncertainty. In two studies, with data from the U.S. and the U.K., we compared the viability of two conceptualizations of uncertainty about aging in the CEMSA: the model’s original operationalization, uncertainty discrepancy, and an alternative, the perceived probability of negative experiences (PPNE) associated with aging. In both studies, uncertainty discrepancy and PPNE contributed independently to attitudes toward aging; PPNE emerged as a stronger predictor of people’s affective reactions to aging. These findings underscore the importance of multifaceted views of uncertainty for scholars of communication and aging.

KEYWORDS:

• Successful aging
• uncertainty
• problematic integration
• aging

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Dr. Afifi and the anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful, detailed, and constructive feedback on earlier versions of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Jessica Gasiorek (Ph.D., University of California, Santa Barbara) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communicology, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa.

Craig Fowler (Ph.D., Penn State University) is an Associate Professor at Massey University, New Zealand.

Howard Giles (Ph.D., D.Sc., University of Bristol) is a Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Communication, University of California, Santa Barbara.

ORCID

Jessica Gasiorek http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8449-8867

Notes

1 It should be noted that these two studies only tested for mean differences between profiles for these model variables; the structural relationships proposed by Fowler et al. (2015) were not tested.

2 Additional scales not relevant to the current study were also included in the questionnaire. Data from dataset are also published elsewhere in Gasiorek and Barile (2018).

3 Participants could designate more than one ethnicity; as such, percentages total more than 100%.

4 The CEMSA proposes that uncertainty should also affect communication about aging (in addition to affect, efficacy, and successful aging). However, our communication about aging scale asks people to report on the extent to which people engage in these behaviors in general. This outcome should not be influenced by a short writing task (with items immediately following that task). However, it was possible that the task could influence participants’ report of their communication. Thus, participants reported on communication before any writing task.

5 We compared the experimental group to this sub-group of the control condition – rather than the entire control group – because this sub-group corresponds to the sub-group of the UD condition who received the writing prompt. Those who were in the UD condition by random assignment but did not receive the prompt comprise a distinct sub-group in the context of the CEMSA: they are people that reported that they were not experiencing any uncertainty discrepancy (i.e., they wish they knew “exactly the same” as they currently do). Including participants in the control group who reported no uncertainty discrepancy in a comparison group would result in comparing two fundamentally different groups: one in which everyone reports experiencing uncertainty discrepancy at the outset (by design), and one in which only some people report experiencing uncertainty discrepancy at the outset.

6 Because uncertainty discrepancy and PPNE were correlated, we also checked for group differences in each manipulation's non-focal form of uncertainty. There were no significant differences in PPNE for those in the UD reduction condition compared to control: M_UD= 3.24 (SD = 1.28), M_con = 3.06 (SD = 1.12), t(173) = −1.26, p = .208. There were also no differences in post-task scores on uncertainty discrepancy for those in the PPNE reduction condition compared to control: M_PPNE = 4.25 (SD = 1.22), M_con = 4.19 (SD = 1.17), t(268) = −0.447, p = .655.

7 Fit statistics indicated that a four-profile solution was also viable (and might fit the data better, in relative terms). In this solution, the relative structures for engaged (22.0%), disengaged (35.5%), and bantering (27.0%) profiles remained similar, though the bantering profile's relative endorsement of future care wishes items was lower. The new profile that emerged (15.4%) indicated high endorsement of future care wishes items, alongside comparatively high endorsement of self-categorization, teasing, and expressing optimism.

8 That these two ways of conceptualizing and operationalizing uncertainty are related but distinct was confirmed by our data: their respective observed composites were moderately correlated, r = 0.42 in Study 1 and r = 0.28 in Study 2 (see Table 1), and their latent composites (obtained when both were included in a structural model, an approach that better controls for measurement error), had a somewhat higher, but still moderate, correlation, r = 0.55 in Study 1 and r = 0.38 in Study 2 (see Table 3).