Grandma's weird mood swings: the increasing role of emotion in elders' decision making
“I think I’ll just call tomorrow and cancel the appointment. There are lots of doctors around, people shouldn’t just drag me along to some weird person I’ve never heard of.”
This week, Grandma had a regular checkup with her primary care doctor at Kaiser, which we schedule every six months at the doctor’s request. I let Grandma know the day before the appointment, and she got quite upset that my mom had made this decision and given her only a day’s notice.
She later asked several very wise and practical questions about the physician, such as how many years of experience she had and what kind of medicine she practiced. However, no matter how clearly I explained the situation, she still could not remember that she saw this person a couple of times every year.
Wanting to honor and sympathize with her desire for control over her healthcare, I reassured her that the doctor had advanced medical training and plenty of experience, and reminded her that she had been very happy with her over the past years. Also I encouraged her to take the lead in the conversation and bring up any of her issues and concerns during the appointment.
Finally I suggested that Grandma just go and take advantage of the chance to speak with a doctor, since it was already scheduled and couldn’t hurt. Perhaps she saw the logic of that later on her own, although she disagreed verbally.
She eventually went along with us, and the appointment went pretty smoothly, although it took some firm coaxing to get her cleaned up and out the door that morning. But the experience, and similar decisions and statements on Grandma’s part related to clothes, exercises, food etc made me wonder about how aging may affect people’s methods of reasoning and making choices.
It might seem weird or frustrating to some people that someone would find it more important to assert their personal autonomy within the family than to exercise or receive healthcare. But a 2005 study by Drs. Mather and Carstensen, published in Trends in Cognitive Science, suggests that emotions and the pursuit of perceived emotional gratification play a much larger role in the decision making of the elderly than of younger adults.
The researchers compared senior citizens’ views of sample pairs of advertising slogans, and observed a distinct preference for the one with more emotion-laden content, while not observing this effect in younger subjects.The US government’s National Institute of Aging puts out a regular science and psychology report, which in July 2007 linked that study, and a few others by those and other researchers, into a context suggesting that emotional concerns become more crucial to the well-being of seniors as they get older. And no one has ever claimed that emotions are completely rational!
So perhaps it makes sense that at eighty-eight, my extremely practical and calm grandmother now experiences strange mood swings, no longer gets along with everyone, speaks her mind freely, and cares just as much about how information is presented to her as about its context.
And we’ll do our best to be honest yet empathetic with her, figuring out how to help her maintain privacy, dignity, and autonomy as much as possible while keeping her safe and clean.
Mara Mather and Laura Carstensen, “Aging and Motivated Cognition: the Positivity Effect in Attention and Memory,” Trends in Cognitive Science 9, no. 10 (2005): 496-502.
This week, Grandma had a regular checkup with her primary care doctor at Kaiser, which we schedule every six months at the doctor’s request. I let Grandma know the day before the appointment, and she got quite upset that my mom had made this decision and given her only a day’s notice.
She later asked several very wise and practical questions about the physician, such as how many years of experience she had and what kind of medicine she practiced. However, no matter how clearly I explained the situation, she still could not remember that she saw this person a couple of times every year.
Wanting to honor and sympathize with her desire for control over her healthcare, I reassured her that the doctor had advanced medical training and plenty of experience, and reminded her that she had been very happy with her over the past years. Also I encouraged her to take the lead in the conversation and bring up any of her issues and concerns during the appointment.
Finally I suggested that Grandma just go and take advantage of the chance to speak with a doctor, since it was already scheduled and couldn’t hurt. Perhaps she saw the logic of that later on her own, although she disagreed verbally.
She eventually went along with us, and the appointment went pretty smoothly, although it took some firm coaxing to get her cleaned up and out the door that morning. But the experience, and similar decisions and statements on Grandma’s part related to clothes, exercises, food etc made me wonder about how aging may affect people’s methods of reasoning and making choices.
It might seem weird or frustrating to some people that someone would find it more important to assert their personal autonomy within the family than to exercise or receive healthcare. But a 2005 study by Drs. Mather and Carstensen, published in Trends in Cognitive Science, suggests that emotions and the pursuit of perceived emotional gratification play a much larger role in the decision making of the elderly than of younger adults.
The researchers compared senior citizens’ views of sample pairs of advertising slogans, and observed a distinct preference for the one with more emotion-laden content, while not observing this effect in younger subjects.The US government’s National Institute of Aging puts out a regular science and psychology report, which in July 2007 linked that study, and a few others by those and other researchers, into a context suggesting that emotional concerns become more crucial to the well-being of seniors as they get older. And no one has ever claimed that emotions are completely rational!
So perhaps it makes sense that at eighty-eight, my extremely practical and calm grandmother now experiences strange mood swings, no longer gets along with everyone, speaks her mind freely, and cares just as much about how information is presented to her as about its context.
And we’ll do our best to be honest yet empathetic with her, figuring out how to help her maintain privacy, dignity, and autonomy as much as possible while keeping her safe and clean.
Mara Mather and Laura Carstensen, “Aging and Motivated Cognition: the Positivity Effect in Attention and Memory,” Trends in Cognitive Science 9, no. 10 (2005): 496-502.