Age differences in supportive reactions toward a person in need: A quasi-experimental study
Identifieur interne : 001914 ( Istex/Corpus ); précédent : 001913; suivant : 001915Age differences in supportive reactions toward a person in need: A quasi-experimental study
Auteurs : Peter Aymanns ; Sigrun-Heide Filipp ; Markus WinkelerSource :
- International Journal of Behavioral Development [ 0165-0254 ] ; 2003-05.
Abstract
Age differences in social support have been studied almost exclusively with regard to the older adults’ role as support recipients, whereas the influence of support providers’ age has not received much attention. A few experimental studies indicate that the willingness to help others (e.g., by giving donations) increases with age. However, studies are lacking which extend these findings to less clear-cut situational contexts, for example, to supporting victims of a critical life event and which, in addition, systematically investigate social cognitive and affective reactions as mediators of age differences. Using a quasi-experimental design, N 1/4 452 older vs. middle-aged participants (61 to 78 vs. 34 to 52 years old, respectively) read fictitious scenarios describing a protagonist who asked for support in dealing with the diagnosis of a severe illness. Protagonist’s age was varied between participants (70 vs. 40 years). Independent of protagonist’s age, older participants (compared to middle-aged) were more willing to provide emotion-focused support, but were less willing to discuss the illness in detail (problem-focused support), and they showed a higher tendency to withdraw and to distance themselves from the protagonist. Age differences in emotion-focused support were mediated by the older adults’ higher self-ascribed competence in providing support.
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DOI: 10.1080/01650250244000308
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A few experimental studies indicate that the willingness to help others (e.g., by giving donations) increases with age. However, studies are lacking which extend these findings to less clear-cut situational contexts, for example, to supporting victims of a critical life event and which, in addition, systematically investigate social cognitive and affective reactions as mediators of age differences. Using a quasi-experimental design, N 1/4 452 older vs. middle-aged participants (61 to 78 vs. 34 to 52 years old, respectively) read fictitious scenarios describing a protagonist who asked for support in dealing with the diagnosis of a severe illness. Protagonist’s age was varied between participants (70 vs. 40 years). Independent of protagonist’s age, older participants (compared to middle-aged) were more willing to provide emotion-focused support, but were less willing to discuss the illness in detail (problem-focused support), and they showed a higher tendency to withdraw and to distance themselves from the protagonist. Age differences in emotion-focused support were mediated by the older adults’ higher self-ascribed competence in providing support.</div></front></TEI><istex><corpusName>sage</corpusName><author><json:item><name>Peter Aymanns</name></json:item><json:item><name>Sigrun-Heide Filipp</name></json:item><json:item><name>Markus Winkeler</name><affiliations><json:string>University of Trier, Germany</json:string></affiliations></json:item></author><articleId><json:string>10.1080_01650250244000308</json:string></articleId><language><json:string>eng</json:string></language><originalGenre><json:string>research-article</json:string></originalGenre><abstract>Age differences in social support have been studied almost exclusively with regard to the older adults’ role as support recipients, whereas the influence of support providers’ age has not received much attention. A few experimental studies indicate that the willingness to help others (e.g., by giving donations) increases with age. However, studies are lacking which extend these findings to less clear-cut situational contexts, for example, to supporting victims of a critical life event and which, in addition, systematically investigate social cognitive and affective reactions as mediators of age differences. Using a quasi-experimental design, N 1/4 452 older vs. middle-aged participants (61 to 78 vs. 34 to 52 years old, respectively) read fictitious scenarios describing a protagonist who asked for support in dealing with the diagnosis of a severe illness. Protagonist’s age was varied between participants (70 vs. 40 years). Independent of protagonist’s age, older participants (compared to middle-aged) were more willing to provide emotion-focused support, but were less willing to discuss the illness in detail (problem-focused support), and they showed a higher tendency to withdraw and to distance themselves from the protagonist. 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A few experimental studies indicate that the willingness to help others (e.g., by giving donations) increases with age. However, studies are lacking which extend these findings to less clear-cut situational contexts, for example, to supporting victims of a critical life event and which, in addition, systematically investigate social cognitive and affective reactions as mediators of age differences. Using a quasi-experimental design, N 1/4 452 older vs. middle-aged participants (61 to 78 vs. 34 to 52 years old, respectively) read fictitious scenarios describing a protagonist who asked for support in dealing with the diagnosis of a severe illness. Protagonist’s age was varied between participants (70 vs. 40 years). Independent of protagonist’s age, older participants (compared to middle-aged) were more willing to provide emotion-focused support, but were less willing to discuss the illness in detail (problem-focused support), and they showed a higher tendency to withdraw and to distance themselves from the protagonist. Age differences in emotion-focused support were mediated by the older adults’ higher self-ascribed competence in providing support.</p></abstract></profileDesc><revisionDesc><change when="2003-05">Published</change></revisionDesc></teiHeader></istex:fulltextTEI><json:item><extension>txt</extension><original>false</original><mimetype>text/plain</mimetype><uri>https://api.istex.fr/document/9869172A9A2FFB12348705F106A9C03990572A10/fulltext/txt</uri></json:item></fulltext><metadata><istex:metadataXml wicri:clean="corpus sage not found" wicri:toSee="no header"><istex:xmlDeclaration>version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"</istex:xmlDeclaration><istex:docType PUBLIC="-//NLM//DTD Journal Publishing DTD v2.3 20070202//EN" URI="journalpublishing.dtd" name="istex:docType"></istex:docType><istex:document><article article-type="research-article" dtd-version="2.3" xml:lang="EN"><front><journal-meta><journal-id journal-id-type="hwp">spjbd</journal-id><journal-id journal-id-type="publisher-id">JBD</journal-id><journal-title>International Journal of Behavioral Development</journal-title><issn pub-type="ppub">0165-0254</issn><publisher><publisher-name>Sage Publications</publisher-name><publisher-loc>Sage CA: Thousand Oaks, CA</publisher-loc></publisher></journal-meta><article-meta><article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.1080/01650250244000308</article-id><article-id pub-id-type="publisher-id">10.1080_01650250244000308</article-id><article-categories><subj-group subj-group-type="heading"><subject>Articles</subject></subj-group></article-categories><title-group><article-title>Age differences in supportive reactions toward a person in need: A quasi-experimental study</article-title></title-group><contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Aymanns</surname><given-names>Peter</given-names></name></contrib></contrib-group><contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Filipp</surname><given-names>Sigrun-Heide</given-names></name></contrib></contrib-group><contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Winkeler</surname><given-names>Markus</given-names></name><aff>University of Trier, Germany</aff></contrib></contrib-group><pub-date pub-type="ppub"><month>05</month><year>2003</year></pub-date><volume>27</volume><issue>3</issue><fpage>232</fpage><lpage>242</lpage><abstract><p>Age differences in social support have been studied almost exclusively with regard to the older adults’ role as support recipients, whereas the influence of support providers’ age has not received much attention. A few experimental studies indicate that the willingness to help others (e.g., by giving donations) increases with age. However, studies are lacking which extend these findings to less clear-cut situational contexts, for example, to supporting victims of a critical life event and which, in addition, systematically investigate social cognitive and affective reactions as mediators of age differences. Using a quasi-experimental design, <italic>N</italic> 1/4 452 older vs. middle-aged participants (61 to 78 vs. 34 to 52 years old, respectively) read fictitious scenarios describing a protagonist who asked for support in dealing with the diagnosis of a severe illness. Protagonist’s age was varied between participants (70 vs. 40 years). Independent of protagonist’s age, older participants (compared to middle-aged) were more willing to provide emotion-focused support, but were less willing to discuss the illness in detail (problem-focused support), and they showed a higher tendency to withdraw and to distance themselves from the protagonist. Age differences in emotion-focused support were mediated by the older adults’ higher self-ascribed competence in providing support.</p></abstract><custom-meta-wrap><custom-meta xlink:type="simple"><meta-name>sagemeta-type</meta-name><meta-value>Journal Article</meta-value></custom-meta><custom-meta xlink:type="simple"><meta-name>search-text</meta-name><meta-value> http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/pp/01650254.htmlDOI: 10.1080/01650250244000308 Age differences in supportive reactions toward a person in need: A quasi-experimental study Peter Aymanns, Sigrun-Heide Filipp, and Markus Winkeler University of Trier, Germany Age differences in social support have been studied almost exclusively with regard to the older adults' role as support recipients, whereas the influence of support providers' age has not received much attention. A few experimental studies indicate that the willingness to help others (e.g., by giving donations) increases with age. However, studies are lacking which extend these findings to less clear- cut situational contexts, for example, to supporting victims of a critical life event and which, in addition, systematically investigate social cognitive and affective reactions as mediators of age differences. Using a quasi-experimental design, N ¼ 452 older vs. middle-aged participants (61 to 78 vs. 34 to 52 years old, respectively) read fictitious scenarios describing a protagonist who asked for support in dealing with the diagnosis of a severe illness. Protagonist's age was varied between participants (70 vs. 40 years). Independent of protagonist's age, older participants (compared to middle-aged) were more willing to provide emotion-focused support, but were less willing to discuss the illness in detail (problem-focused support), and they showed a higher tendency to withdraw and to distance themselves from the protagonist. Age differences in emotion-focused support were mediated by the older adults' higher self-ascribed competence in providing support. The development and maintenance of social relationships, in general, is decisively determined by the age and gender of those involved. The same may hold true with regard to the exchange of social support and, in fact, the role of gender in providing support has been frequently under study, whereas the age variable has been given far less consideration. As far as the gender variable is concerned, it has been reported repeatedly that women are more inclined to discuss a friend's emotional needs, whereas men seem to provide more instrumental support, that is, they tend to respond more frequently to the ''practical'' facets of the problem at hand (cf. Goldsmith & Dun, 1997). However, the majority of these studies was conducted with samples of college students and, hence, leave as an open question whether their findings can be replicated in other age groups, e.g., in older adults. If the age variable has been given any consideration at all, this has been mainly with regard to the age of the recipient of social support, as a review of the extensive literature on caring for older individuals yields (cf. Call, Finch, Huck, & Kane, 1999). Yet as far as their functional status allows, older people are not restricted to the role of a passive recipient; rather they are inclined to actively support other people in their social world, namely their children, grandchildren, and other family members. And even outside their families, older people engage in supportive behaviours much more frequently than has been acknowledged so far, as, for example, volunteer helpers in community settings (cf. Kincade et al., 1996). In general, however, there are few studies that have systematically examined age differences in the readiness to provide social support.One example can be seen in the field experiments conducted by Midlarsky and Kahana (1994) to investigate the relation between the willingness to contribute to a fund for infants with birth defects and the (potential) donor's age within a sample ranging from adolescents to old-aged participants. They found that nearly 100% of the old-aged subsample (65 years and older) offered money compared to 80% of the middle-aged (35 to 64 years) participants, and 50% of the adolescents and younger adults. In order to estimate the generalisability of their findings, these authors investigated the attendance in classes designed to teach first aid in a second experiment. The study revealed that participants 65 years of age and older were more likely to sign up for the first aid class regardless of the cost, based on their intention to provide genuine help in cases of emergency. Thus, both studies suggest that supportive behaviours may become increasingly prominent as people grow older. As interesting as these results might be, they are obviously restricted to the particular experimental setting from which they were obtained. First, the situational arrangement only asked for the provision of instrumental support within a situation characterised by a clear and unambiguous demand structure. Studies are lacking in which age differences in providing social support are examined within more complex and highly demanding situations, e.g., when the needy person has to cope with a severe and stressful life event and when it is far less clear how to provide this person with support, if at all. Second, the studies reported in the literature so far do not allow for any inferences, as far as the social-cognitive and affective-motivational processes are concerned, which can International Journal of Behavioral Development# 2003 The International Society for the 2003, 27 (3), 232242Study of Behavioural Development Correspondence should be addressed to Dr Peter Aymanns or Prof Dr Sigrun-Heide Filipp, University of Trier, Department of Psychology, D-54286 Trier, Germany; e-mail: aymanns@uni-trier.de or filip- p@uni-trier.de.The study is part of a larger research project funded by German Research Foundation (DFG; ref. no. Ay 7/11). possibly explain the observed age differences (i.e., act as mediator variables). Third, these studies have focused on the age variable only with regard to the provider's or the recipient's age per se rather than additionally investigating how age similarity or dissimilarity between them might influence the exchange of social support. With regard to the first issue, research on providing social support to victims of a critical life event--prototypically represented by the diagnosis of cancer (Filipp, 1992)--surely has a long tradition. For example, studies with cancer patients suggest that all modes of emotional support that are aimed at directly increasing the patients' well-being are perceived as extremely helpful and are obviously provided by family members or friends to a sufficient degree (Aymanns, Filipp, & Klauer, 1995; Dakof & Taylor, 1990). Furthermore, patients often want to discuss their hopes and fears and the implications of their illness in order to reappraise and/or to deal constructively with their lot (Burleson & Goldsmith, 1998). However, patients suffering from severe and life-threatening diseases not infrequently report either being implicitly rejected or being treated in an ambivalent manner, whereby emotional encouragement is combined with distancing behaviours and the avoidance of discussing the patient's needs (Herbert & Dunkel-Schetter, 1992). These reactions by others may result from their feelings of being overtaxed and/or from threats to their illusions of invulnerability. As Janoff-Bulman and Berger (2000) stated, nonvictims generally ''navigate their life course'' with a sense of invulnerability and security, knowing that bad things might happen, but with a certainty that these things will not happen to them. Being confronted with a person who is victimised by a severe life crisis might invalidate these assumptions of invulnerability, of the benevolence of the world, and of the nonrandomness of events. Accordingly, not only altruistic concerns and the provision of social support, but also the motives of self-protection and the various forms of withdrawal and distancing need to be taken into consideration in studies where the age differences in reactions to victims of life crises are at the centre of interest. The second issue concerns the relevance of social-cognitive and affective-motivational processes, which are thought to mediate the age differences possibly observed in this realm. Research in the related field of intergenerational relationships has revealed considerable differences between older and middle-aged adults in how they construe social interactions between family members (cf. Winkeler, Filipp, & Boll, 2000). Models of helping behaviours and social support outside the family context (e.g., Eisenberg, 1986; Schwartz & Howard, 1984) propose that the decision to become involved in a supportive manner depends, among other factors, on (1) how the victim's distress and his or her need for help is appraised, (2) the degree of moral obligation felt to help the victim, and (3) one's self-perceptions of being competent to meet his or her needs and to carry out the corresponding behaviours. More- over, feelings of pity and empathy with the victim are assumed to promote supportive behaviours (cf. Eisenberg & Miller, 1987). Accordingly, research should examine whether age differences in helping might be related to (and explained by) these various intermediate processes. According to Midlarsky and Kahana (1994) older people are, generally speaking, more altruistic than younger people, and they commit themselves in an unselfish way for the welfare of another person. Thus, feelings of pity should be enhanced inolder adults, since empathic concern and altruism are reported to be highly interrelated (cf. Batson & Oleson, 1991). However, in a recent study, Schieman and Van Gundy (2000) were unable to find evidence for this assumption; rather, they reported a strong negative correlation between age and dispositional empathy (defined as self-reports of high emotional involvement with the problems of other people). In other words, older participants were less empathetic, presum- ably due to a decline in their social status, to physical impairment, and to an accumulation of personal losses. Since older people are repeatedly exposed to these various adverse events, it is not unlikely that (compared to younger people) they may underestimate the distress of another person and, as a consequence, their empathy and feelings of pity may actually diminish. However, since older adults have usually dealt with many stressful events in their lives, they may ascribe more expertise to themselves than younger people would do. This is in line with the notion of wisdom, in which it is proposed that older people possess an expert knowledge system concerning the fundamental pragmatics of life (Baltes & Staudinger, 2000). Consequently, it is not unlikely to assume that older adults have higher self-efficacy beliefs in dealing with adversity and, therefore, perceive themselves as more competent to effectively help others who have to cope with such events. In addition, there is some evidence that older people feel more committed to value orientations, namely by having greater concerns for significant others, in the sense that they perceive these orientations as being personally more important for them and as providing more direction for their actions (Brandt- sta¨dter, Renner, & Baltes-Go¨tz, 1989). Thus, it is reasonable to assume that the older adults, in general, feel a higher obligation to act in a supportive manner when facing a needy person. In a study investigating the relationship between self- reported helping behaviour and altruistic moral judgment in a sample of older adults, Midlarsky, Kahana, Corley, Nemer- off, and Schonbar (1999) had their participants solve moral dilemma situations and state their reasons for the solutions they had generated. They found that helping behaviour by the older adults was not guided by an empathic orientation toward the victim, but by a highly abstract and strongly internalised type of reasoning, that is, a generalised adherence to the reciprocity norm. Thus, older persons' increased willingness to provide social support might be, if it is observed, due less to empathetic feelings like pitying the victim and/or to percep- tions of the victim's distress, but more to stronger feelings of moral obligation and a higher self-ascribed competence to help others. With regard to the third issue, it may be the relation between providers' and recipients' ages that qualifies the main effect hypothesis of enhanced willingness to provide social support in older people. In general, an individual's supportive reactions might be governed by perceptions of similarity or dissimilarity between the needy person and themselves with regard to a broad range of characteristics like social status or family membership (cf. Dowd, 1980). One important source of (dis- )similarity perceptions might be the age variable: When confronted with a younger person, older adults may perceive this person as being basically different from themselves and, hence, may see themselves as less competent to help. Accordingly, the older adults' readiness to provide social support might be enhanced (and their tendency toward INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF BEHAVIORAL DEVELOPMENT, 2003, 27 (3), 232242233 234AYMANNS ET AL. / AGE DIFFERENCES AND SOCIAL SUPPORT distancing diminished) when faced with a needy person of the same age. The few studies related to this topic show an inconsistent picture that does not clearly support this ''similarity hypoth- esis''. On the one hand, Karuza, Zevon, Gleason, Karuza, and Nash (1990) found in a sample of young (aged 19 to 27 years), middle-aged (aged 44 to 64 years), and older (aged 65 to 87 years) participants that helping transactions were most pronounced among people of the same age group with regard to frequency and duration--probably due to the age homo- geneity of social networks and/or to more familiarity with same-aged peers. On the other hand--and with regard to a completely different form of helping--Yinon, Sharon, and Malkiman (1983) reported that neither older adults' nor middle-aged adults' readiness to collect books for a new library was enhanced when it was done for the benefit of people belonging to their own age group as compared to people from different age groups. Taken together, the evidence on age differences in providing support to victims of life crises and on the social-cognitive and affective-motivational processes that might mediate these differences is extremely scarce. Drawing on these shortcom- ings, the present study was designed to achieve three aims, namely, to examine (1) whether older persons differ from middle-aged persons with respect to their reactions toward a victim of a severe life event, (2) whether age differences in these behavioural tendencies are accounted for and mediated by social-cognitive and affective-motivational variables, for instance, the self-ascribed competence to help the victim, and (3) whether the relation between the provider's and the victim's age (rather than provider's age alone) accounts for the observed differences. Method Participants Drawn from registration data of a German state (covering major cities as well as rural areas), a sample of N ¼ 452 male and female community-dwelling participants was recruited. Sampling was restricted to two age groups, namely, a subsample of older adults (n ¼ 238) aged 61 to 78 years (M ¼ 70.5; SD ¼ 3.67) and a subsample of middle-aged adults (n ¼ 214) aged 34 to 52 years (M ¼ 40.2; SD ¼ 3.65). Each subsample was representative of the age-equivalent population with regard to basic demographic variables (e.g., marital status, number of children, employment status), with the exception of a slightly higher level of education. Due to the research material (see below), participants were asked a few health- related questions. Most of them (n ¼ 392; 86.7 %) perceived their current health status as ''good''; n ¼ 31 participants (6.9 %) reported that they had either suffered or were still suffering from cancer. Stimulus material and design The study used a fictitious written scenario, in which an encounter with a person facing a critical life-event was described. Participants were instructed to imagine as vividly as they could that they would meet a neighbour (protagonist) and that they would ask him/her how he or she is feeling. The scenario continued with a statement by the protagonist abouthaving been confronted recently with the diagnosis of abdominal cancer and about his way of coping with the diagnosis. The statement ended with an (implicit) request for help. An example of this scenario can be found in the Appendix. A four-factor between-participants design was applied, in which two factors were experimentally manipulated: age of protagonist (70 vs. 40 years) and gender of protagonist. The remaining factors: age of participants (older vs. middle-aged adults; see above) and gender of participants were quasi- experimental. The 2 (age of protagonist)2 (gender of protagonist) experimental conditions were randomly assigned to participants of the two age groups. For reasons of simplification, gender of protagonist was nested with gender of participants, that is, the male protagonist's condition was assigned to male participants and the female protagonist's condition was assigned to female participants. This nested factor was subsequently named gender and was included in this study principally as a control variable.1 Dependent variables Dependent variables were behavioural tendencies toward the protagonist and several social-cognitive and affective-motiva- tional variables, referred to in the following as situation-related construals, along with a manipulation check for the protago- nist's age. To assess the behavioural tendencies toward the protagonist, a multidimensional inventory was developed based on concep- tions of various types of social support. Starting from eight a priori categories, k ¼ 62 items were generated. Participants had to rate to what degree they would engage in the respective behaviour (6-point scale ranging from certainly not, 1, to certainly, 6): (1) emotional support (e.g., ''I would tell him that I know how he feels''), (2) informational support (e.g., ''I would recommend experienced doctors''), (3) palliative sup- port (e.g., ''I would try to calm him down and persuade him that things will not turn out that bad''), (4) motivational support (e.g., ''I would encourage him not to give up''), (5) instrumental support (e.g., ''I would do things for him which he cannot do for himself at the moment''), (6) companionship, that is, spending time with the protagonist (e.g., ''I would go somewhere with him where we can talk together without disruption''), (7) illness-related communication, that is, talking about aspects of the illness in detail (e.g., ''I would ask him to tell me exactly what happened''). The last category was comprised of items which indicated (8) distancing oneself from the protagonist (e.g., ''I would try to change the topic immediately''). Since the a priori categories were not mutually exclusive, a principal component analysis with orthogonal rotation (VAR- IMAX) was conducted to examine the underlying dimensional structure of the inventory. Seven factors with eigenvalues greater than l ¼ 1 emerged, which explained 49% of the total variance. In addition, exploratory factor analyses were con- ducted separately for both age groups, which revealed that three of the seven factors could be identified almost identically in both subsamples. In order to examine structural invariance 1The complete research design consisted of two additional factors, coping- portrayal and mobilisation-behaviour, which were not in the focus of the present study. across both subsamples, a multiple group comparison was performed (AMOS 4.0; Arbuckle & Wothke, 1997), which showed sufficient fit for the unrestricted three-factor model (df ¼ 12) across both subsamples [w2 ¼ 16.44, p ¼ .17, Goodness of Fit Index (GFI) ¼ .99, Adjusted GFI (AGFI) ¼ .96, Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) ¼ .03]. The fit remained almost identical, even if the model (df ¼ 15) was constrained to invariant factor loadings in both subsamples Dw2 (df ¼ 3) ¼ 3.15, p 4 .25. Consequently, scores of each factor's marker items were aggregated to subscales that all displayed sufficient internal consistencies and low to medium-sized intercorrelations (see Table 1). These scales were named as follows: (1) Provision of emotion-focused support (EMOSUP; 10 items; a ¼ .88; M ¼ 3.74; SD ¼ 0.84) comprised mainly the a priori categories emotional support, palliative support, and companionship, and describes a willingness to engage in supportive behaviours aimed at promoting the protagonist's emotional well-being (e.g., embracing him/her; signalling willingness to spend time with him/her; trying to calm him/ her down); (2) Provision of problem-focused support (PROBSUP; 6 items; a ¼ .74; M ¼ 3.63; SD ¼ 0.82), which describes a willingness to engage in behaviours aimed at directing the protagonist's attention to his/her illness and to discuss it in more detail (e.g., asking about the particular symptoms; talking about things that will come up in the future); (3) Withdrawal and distancing (DISTAN; 9 items; a ¼ .83; M ¼ 2.69; SD ¼ 0.82), which reflects the tendency to gain emotional distance from the protagonist and to avoid becoming involved with the problem (e.g., by not paying too much attention to the protagonist; looking for a possibility to stop talking to the protagonist without hurting him/her). Situation-related construals were assessed with regard to four aspects (rating scales from 1 to 6): (1) Perceived distress of the protagonist (DISTRESS; 6 items; e.g., ''He seems to be full of despair''; a ¼ .89; M ¼ 3.31; SD ¼ 1.08); (2) Feeling pity for the protagonist (PITY; 3 items; e.g., ''I pity him a lot''; a ¼ .62; M ¼ 4.48; SD ¼ 0.86); (3) Perceived obligation to help the protagonist (OBLIG; 2 items; e.g., ''I feel a moral obligation to take care of him''; a ¼ .60; M ¼ 3.84; SD ¼ 1.03); (4) Self- ascribed competence to help the protagonist (COMPET; 2 items; e.g., ''I am confident that I would do the right thing for him''; a ¼ .57; M ¼ 4.05; SD ¼ 0.97). Intercorrelations were low to moderate (see also Table 1). In order to allow for a manipulation check of the protagonist's age, the degree of his presumed ''experience inlife'' was assessed by a single item (M ¼ 3.52; SD ¼ 2.23). A t- test indicated that participants ascribed higher experience in life to the protagonist in the condition aged 70 years as compared to aged 40 years (M ¼ 3.67 vs. 3.36; SD ¼ 1.23 vs. 1.21), t (450) ¼ 2.70 (p 5 .01). Thus, the manipulation of age of protagonist could be regarded as successful (cf. Filipp, Winkeler, & Aymanns, 2002). Results Data analyses related to the three aims of our study were performed using multiple regression analyses with all criterion variables being z -standardised. All dichotomous variables, that is, the (quasi-)experimental factors, were effect-coded: The first level of each factor was coded with [þ1], the second level with [ 1]; for details see Tables 2 to 5. This allows the interpretation of the regression slopes (b) as differences between the mean value of participants in the particular condition and the grand mean (which is zero due to standardisation). Age differences in behavioural tendencies A first series of multiple regression analyses was performed to examine effects of age of participants and age of protagonist as well as their interaction (age of participantsage of protagonist) on the three behavioural tendencies (EMOSUP; PROBSUP; DISTAN) with gender controlled for. Regression models proved to be significant for all three criteria (see Table 2). As expected, age of participants could predict each of the behavioural tendencies, yet a differential pattern was found: Older participants scored higher on emotion-focused support compared to the middle-aged participants, but they scored lower on problem-focused support, and they scored higher on withdrawal and distancing. In addition, neither age of protagonist nor age of participantsage of protagonist contributed significantly to predicting behavioural tendencies. The only exception was a marginally significant b-coefficient found for age of protagonistage of participants with regard to problem-focused support (p ¼ .09). This effect indicated that PROBSUP tended to be higher when protagonist and participants were the same (vs. a different) age. In particular, for older participants, mean values for PROBSUP were higher when the protagonist was 70 years of age compared to 40 years INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF BEHAVIORAL DEVELOPMENT, 2003, 27 (3), 232242235 Table 1 Intercorrelations of behavioural tendencies and situation-related construals (above the diagonal: older adults, n ¼ 238; below the diagonal: middle-aged adults, n ¼ 214) EMOSUPPROBSUPDISTANDISTRESSPITYOBLIGCOMPET EMOSUP.42***.25***.13*.26***.63***.44*** PROBSUP.50***.09.05.12þ.30***.31*** DISTAN.39***.30***.12þ.17**.21**.06 DISTRESS.01.01.06.04.07.15* PITY.31***.17*.12þ.07.34***.07 OBLIG.42***.23**.17*.07.41***.21** COMPET.38***.36***.29***.13þ.13þ.04 EMOSUP: Provision of emotion-focused support; PROBSUP: Provision of problem-focused support; DISTAN: Withdrawal and distancing; DISTRESS: Perceived distress of the protagonist; PITY: Feeling pity for the protagonist; OBLIG: Perceived obligation to help the protagonist; COMPET: Self-ascribed competence to help the protagonist. ***p 5 .001; ** p 5 .01; *p 5 .05; þ p 5 .10. 236AYMANNS ET AL. / AGE DIFFERENCES AND SOCIAL SUPPORT Table2 Multiplemoderatedregressionanalysesfrombehaviouraltendenciesandsituation-relatedconstruals(z-standardised)onthe(quasi-)experimentalfactors BehaviouraltendenciesSituation-relatedconstruals EMOSUPPROBSUPDISTANDISTRESSPITYOBLIGCOMPET (Quasi-)experimentalfactorsSEbSEbSEbSEbSEbSEbSEb Ageofparticipants(AP'pts)a.04.17***.05.20***.05.29***.05.10*.04.03.05.17***.05.19*** Ageofprotagonist(AP'nst)b.04.01.05.03.05.06.05.05.04.14**.05.06.05.00 AP'ptsAP'nst.04.02.05.08þ.05.06.05.01.04.04.05.02.05.00 Genderc.04.30***.05.16***.05.10*.05.04.04.32***.05.17***.05.03 R2¼.11,F¼14.95***R2¼.07,F¼9.13***R2¼.10,F¼13.11***R2¼.01,F¼1.64R2¼.12,F¼16.29***R2¼.05,F¼7.06***R2¼.03,F¼4.05** R2:correcteddeterminationcoefficients;F:F-valueformultipleregression;SE:standarderror;b:regressionslopeoftherespectivepredictorvariable. aOlderparticipants[þ1];middle-agedparticipants[1]. bProtagonist70yearsofage[þ1];protagonist40yearsofage[1]. cMaleparticipants(withmaleprotagonist)[þ1];femaleparticipants(withfemaleprotagonist)[1]. ***p5.001;**p5.01;*p5.05;þp5.10. (M ¼.15 vs. M ¼.25), whereas, for middle-aged participants, mean values for PROBSUP were higher when the protagonist was 40 years of age compared to 70 years (M ¼ .31 vs. M ¼ .09). In addition, gender emerged as a significant predictor, indicating that female participants reported higher EMOSUP as well as higher PROBSUP and showed slightly lower DISTAN as compared to male participants. Age differences in situation-related construals In a next step, it was examined whether situation-related construals, in other words, ways in which the participants perceived the protagonist and themselves in the given situation (DISTRESS, PITY, OBLIG, COMPET), varied with the various (quasi-)experimental factors (see also Table 2). These analyses revealed that three of the four criteria were signifi- cantly predicted by the age of participants: Older participants perceived the protagonist as being less distressed; moreover, they perceived a greater obligation to help the protagonist (OBLIG) and ascribed themselves more competence to help the protagonist (COMPET) compared to middle-aged parti- cipants. With regard to PITY, age of participants was not a significant predictor, i.e., subsamples did not differ in their feelings of pity for the protagonist. However, PITY was predicted by gender, with males scoring lower than females. OBLIG was predicted by gender as well: Males perceived less obligation to help the protagonist than females. In addition, the age of protagonist yielded a significant effect on PITY, that is, participants showed less pity if the protagonist was 70 (vs. 40) years old. The interaction of age of participantsage of protagonist was insignificant in all cases. Situation-related construals predicting behavioural tendencies The analyses so far have revealed significant effects of age of participants on behavioural tendencies as well as on some situation-related construals. To examine situation-related construals as mediating variables, a next preceding step investigated whether these variables predicted behavioural tendencies. When gender was controlled for in multiple regression analysis, PITY, OBLIG, and RESPON--but not DISTRESS--could significantly predict provision of emotion- focused support. As can be seen in Table 3 (Model 0), the more pity participants felt for the protagonist and the stronger they perceived their obligation and ascribed themselves competence to help, the more they were ready to provide emotion-focused support. With regard to problem-focused support as a criterion, OBLIG and COMPET served as predictors, whereas DISTRESS and PITY showed no sig- nificant effects (see Table 4): The higher participants perceived their obligation and competence, the more they were willing to provide problem-focused support. Withdrawal and distancing could only be significantly predicted by COMPET, that is, self- ascribed competence reduced the inclination to withdraw from the protagonist (see Table 5). Situation-related construals as mediators of age differences in behavioural tendencies Finally, we examined whether the effects of age of participants on behavioural tendencies were mediated by situation-related construals. Before performing these mediational analyses,however, the possibility had to be excluded that situation- related construals might moderate (instead of mediate) the effects of participants' age on behavioural tendencies (cf. Baron & Kenny, 1986).2 Therefore, a series of multiple regression analyses was performed that included age of participants and one of the situation-related construals, as well as their interaction as predictors of behavioural tenden- cies, respectively, with gender controlled for. Two out of 12 possible interaction effects proved significant: First, with regard to emotion-focused support as a criterion, F (4, 447) ¼ 58.76 (p 5 .001; R2 ¼ .34), significant effects of age of participants (b ¼ .09; p 5 .05), OBLIG (b ¼ .49; p 5 .001), and age of participantsOBLIG (b ¼ .09; p 5 .05) were obtained, indicating that the effect of perceived obligation on emotion-focused support was considerably stronger in the older than in the middle-aged subsample (see Table 1). Second, with regard to withdrawal and distancing as a criterion, F (4, 447) ¼ 17.31 (p 5 .001; R2 ¼ .13), significant effects of age of participants (b ¼ .32; p 5 .001), COMPET (b ¼.15; p 5 .001), and age of participants COMPET (b ¼ .09; p 5 .05) were revealed, indicating that an increase in self-ascribed competence reduced with- drawal and distancing from the protagonist in the middle-aged subsample more strongly than in the older subsample (see also Table 1). In consideration of these moderator effects, the subsequent mediational analyses were performed without OBLIG in the case of emotion-focused support as a criterion and were performed without COMPET in the case of withdrawal and distancing as a criterion. Thus, in order to test mediation with regard to emotion- focused support, this criterion was regressed on age of participants (Model 1), followed by the situation-related construals DISTRESS (Model 2), PITY (Model 3), and COMPET (Model 4), each with gender controlled for. Hence in these analyses a particular situation-related construal can be regarded as a mediator if the effect of age of participants on EMOSUP (observed in Model 1) is substantially reduced, as soon as the particular construal is included into the regression equation (Models 2 to 4; see also Table 3). As could be expected from the previous analyses, the effect of age of participants remained constant when DISTRESS and PITY were included, but was substantially reduced from b ¼ .17 (p 5 .001; Model 3) to b ¼ .09 (p 5 .05) by inclusion of COMPET (Model 4). Thus, these analyses indicated that self- ascribed competence contributed to the prediction by (par- tially) mediating the effect of age of participants on provision of emotion-focused support. Analyses for PROBSUP and DISTAN as criteria were performed according the same rationale. However, instead of revealing mediating effects of the situation-related construals, suppressor effects were observed. As can be seen from Table 4, the effect of age of participants on PROBSUP increased from b ¼.20 to b ¼.29 (p 5 .001) when OBLIG and COMPET were controlled in the regression equation (Models 4 and 5). With regard to DISTAN as a criterion (see Table 5), the effect of age of participants slightly increased from b ¼.30 to b ¼ .33 (p 5 .001) when OBLIG was entered in the multiple regression (Model 4). INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF BEHAVIORAL DEVELOPMENT, 2003, 27 (3), 232242237 2We thank one anonymous reviewer for drawing our attention to this important point. 238AYMANNS ET AL. / AGE DIFFERENCES AND SOCIAL SUPPORT Table3 Multipleregressionanalysesfromemotion-focusedsupportonageofparticipants,gender,andsituation-relatedconstruals Provisionofemotion-focusedsupport(z-standardised) Model0Model1Model2Model3Model4 PredictorvariablesSEbSEbSEbSEbSEb Constant.03.00.04.01.04.01.04.01.04.01 Ageofparticipantsa.04.17***.05.17***.04.16***.04.09* Genderb.04.18***.04.30***.04.30***.05.23***.04.20*** DISTRESS.04.00.05.04.04.05.04.00 PITY.04.11**.05.21***.04.26*** OBLIG.04.43*** COMPET.04.39***.43*** R2¼.47,F(5,446)¼80.92***R2¼.11,F(2,449)¼29.91***R2¼.11,F(3,448)¼20.23***R2¼.15,F(4,447)¼21.08***R2¼.32,F(5,446)¼43.66*** R2:correcteddeterminationcoefficient;F:F-valueformultipleregression;SE:standarderror;b:regressionslopeoftherespectivepredictorvariable. aOlderparticipants[þ1];middle-agedparticipants[1]. bMaleparticipants(withmaleprotagonist)[þ1];femaleparticipants(withfemaleprotagonist)[1]. ***p5.001;**p5.01;*p5.05. Table4 Multipleregressionanalysesfromproblem-focusedsupportonageofparticipants,gender,andsituation-relatedconstruals Provisionofproblem-focusedsupport(z-standardised) Model0Model1Model2Model3Model4Model5 PredictorvariablesSEbSEbSEbSEbSEbSEb Constant.04.00.05.01.05.01.05.01.04.01.04.00 Ageofparticipantsa.05.20***.05.20***.05.20***.05.24***.04.29*** Genderb.05.12*.05.16***.05.16***.05.13**.05.12*.04.09* DISTRESS.04.04.05.02.05.02.05.02.04.02 PITY.05.08.05.10*.05.02.05.08 OBLIG.05.14**.05.23***.05.19*** COMPET.05.29***.04.34*** R2¼.14, F(5,446)¼15.22***R2¼.06, F(2,449)¼16.59***R2¼.06, F(3,448)¼11.10***R2¼.07, F(4,447)¼9.50***R2¼.11, F(5,446)¼12.39***R2¼.22, F(6,445)¼21.67*** R2:correcteddeterminationcoefficient;F:F-valueformultipleregression;SE:standarderror;b:regressionslopeoftherespectivepredictorvariable. aOlderparticipants[þ1];middle-agedparticipants[1]. bMaleparticipants(withmaleprotagonist)[þ1];femaleparticipants(withfemaleprotagonist)[1]. ***p5.001;**p5.01;*p5.05. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF BEHAVIORAL DEVELOPMENT, 2003, 27 (3), 232242239 Table5 Multipleregressionanalysesfromwithdrawalanddistancingonageofparticipants,gender,andsituation-relatedconstruals Withdrawalanddistancing(z-standardised) Model0Model1Model2Model3Model4 PredictorvariablesSEbSEbSEbSEbSEb Constant.05.00.04.01.04.01.04.01.04.01 Ageofparticipantsa.04.29***.05.30***.04.31***.05.33*** Genderb.05.06.04.10*.05.09*.05.05.05.04 DISTRESS.05.04.05.08.04.08.04.09 PITY.05.10.05.12*.05.07 OBLIG.05.08.05.15** COMPET.05.11* R2¼.03, F(5,446)¼4.09**R2¼.09, F(2,449)¼24.33***R2¼.10, F(3,448)¼17.37***R2¼.11, F(4,447)¼14.87***R2¼.13, F(5,446)¼14.11*** R2:correcteddeterminationcoefficient;F:F-valueformultipleregression;SE:standarderror;b:regressionslopeoftherespectivepredictorvariable. aOlderparticipants[þ1];middle-agedparticipants[1]. bMaleparticipants(withmaleprotagonist)[þ1];femaleparticipants(withfemaleprotagonist)[1]. ***p5.001;**p5.01;*p5.05. 240AYMANNS ET AL. / AGE DIFFERENCES AND SOCIAL SUPPORT Discussion Only a few studies have dealt with older people in their role as providers of social support and, in addition, systematically compared older participants to younger ones. Furthermore, these few studies have focused on simply structured situational contexts (e.g., participants being asked for donations), whereas multifacetted situational contexts, like being confronted with victims of life crises, have rarely been examined. In the study reported above, participants belonging to two age groups (older adults, aged 61 to 78 years; middle-aged adults, aged 34 to 52 years) were compared with regard to their reactions to a fictitious person (protagonist) who asked them for support in coping with the diagnosis of cancer. In addition, the protagonist's age was varied (70 vs. 40 years) in order to investigate how the age relation between participants and protagonist (same vs. different age) might determine the various reactions under study. These reactions were conceived of as the participants' behavioural tendencies toward the protagonist, namely, the readiness to provide emotion-focused and/or problem-focused support as well as the tendency to withdraw from the situation. Based on some experimental results, it was expected that older participants would offer more help and would be less inclined to withdraw than middle- aged participants. Moreover, another aim of the study was to examine whether these expected age differences might be mediated by differences in social cognitions and affective reactions related to the protagonist. These situation-related construals included perceptions of the protagonist's distress, feelings of pity for the protagonist, and perceptions of feeling obliged to help, as well as one's self-ascribed competence to help the protagonist. The results reported above clearly revealed participants' age as a substantial source of variance in behavioural tendencies toward the needy person. These effects, however, showed a differential and--at first glance--contradictory pattern: In contrast to findings reported by Midlarsky and Kahana (1994), the older participants were not generally inclined to provide more social support. Rather, although they reported a greater willingness to provide emotion-focused support (as compared to the middle-aged participants), they were less inclined to provide problem-focused support. In other words, the older adults proved to be more involved in directly promoting the protagonist's emotional well-being rather than being involved in discussing his or her problems (e.g., the implications of the disease) in greater detail. Moreover, the older participants' reactions can be characterised by a higher degree of ambivalence, since their greater willingness to provide emotion-focused support was, at the same time, accompanied by a stronger tendency to withdraw, that is, to subtly gain (emotional) distance from the victim and to avoid becoming deeply involved with the victim's concerns. On the other hand, the effects revealed for gender showed a clear and unequivocal pattern: Male, compared to female, participants showed an overall tendency to provide less support to the protagonist (who was always the same gender as the participant). In addition, males displayed a slightly higher tendency toward distancing themselves from the protagonist. This finding is fully in line with results reported from studies utilising younger samples, which indicated that male students were less engaged in seeking and providing social support than female students, especially when they were confronted with another person's emotional problems (e.g., Goldsmith & Dun,1997). Such gender differences have often been explained by differences in gender-role expectations (Barbee et al., 1993); few attempts, however, have been made so far to account for age differences in providing social support. In our study, we have attempted to systematically analyse how older (as compared to middle-aged) participants con- strued the (fictitious) situation at hand. These analyses have first yielded that older participants perceived a greater obligation to help and scored higher in their self-ascribed competence to ''do the right things'' in interacting with the needy person. With regard to self-ascribed competence this finding is especially noteworthy, as most of the research on older adults' self-confidence or self-efficacy--which has mainly been done in the field of memory and cognition--has consistently revealed an age-related decline in these variables (e.g., West & Berry, 1994). However, since older people have gained considerable expertise in dealing with adverse experi- ences during the course of their lives, one can conclude that they have become increasingly self-confident in their abilities to cope with adversity and, consequently, in how to provide adequate support to others in times of crisis. Moreover, it is not unreasonable to assume that the higher normative obligation to help, as perceived by the older participants, may stem from the fact that--since they have dealt with more adverse life experiences--they also have found themselves more often in the situation of being in need of help and support, and, thus are more aware of the underlying norms (cf. Mankowski & Wyer, 1997). In addition, these analyses have shown that the older adults perceived the victim as less distressed, a finding that might also be due to older people's more frequent exposure to adverse life events, which may have caused them to change their standard of evaluation--therefore, they comparatively underestimate the impact of those events. On the other hand, perceiving the victim as less distressed may be reflective of an age-related decline in dispositional empathy, as has been proposed by Schieman and Van Gundy (2000). Accordingly, older people may become less sensitive to the needs of others and become reluctant to cognitively take over the perspective of others (cf. Pratt, Diessner, Pratt, Hunsberger, & Pancer, 1996). In a next step, we investigated whether these situation- related construals were predictive of the various behavioural tendencies: On the one hand, the more participants perceived themselves to be obliged and competent to help, the greater was their willingness to provide both emotion-focused and problem-focused support. However, one of these relations was moderated by participants' age: Especially for participants of the older (compared to the middle-aged) subsample, the willingness to provide emotional support was enhanced when they, additionally, felt obliged to offer help, i.e., the moral obligation obviously had a greater impact on this behavioural tendency for older than for middle-aged participants. On the other hand, the more participants perceived themselves as incompetent helpers the more they were inclined to withdraw from the situation; this effect, however, was more pronounced within the middle-aged compared to the older subsample. This result is partially in line with assumptions made by Herbert and Dunkel-Schetter (1992), who consider helplessness on the part of potential support providers as the crucial variable that determines avoidance and/or ambivalence when people inter- act with victims of life crises. Moreover, feelings of pity emerged as a (weak) predictor of emotion-focused support. Obviously, feeling pity for the person in need directs the potential helper's attention primarily to the needy person's emotional well-being, which in turn enhances the helper's tendency to focus upon and immediately palliate his or her distress. Finally, we examined whether differences in situation- related construals accounted for the observed age differences in behavioural tendencies toward the protagonist, i.e., whether they operate as mediators. With regard to emotion-focused support as a criterion, results indicated that older people are more willing to engage in behaviours aimed at enhancing the emotional well-being of a needy person due to their self- perceptions of being competent and effective helpers, whereas feeling pity for the person and perceiving him or her as highly distressed proved to be irrelevant in this respect. Taken together, older people seem to be more emotionally supportive than middle-aged people, and this difference may be due to elderly's feelings that they ''can'' and that they ''must'' provide that type of support. On the contrary, the various situation-related construals could neither explain age differences in problem-focused support nor those in distancing behaviours; rather, construals proved to work as suppressor variables. When controlling for these variables in the regression equation, older participants were even less inclined to provide problem-focused support and even more inclined to withdraw from the situation compared to middle-aged participants. In order to explain these differences one might follow propositions according to which older people regulate their social relationships predo- minantly in a way that their emotional needs can be satisfied, whereas informational goals become less salient (Carstensen, 1993). With regard to behavioural tendencies in the face of a needy person, this may imply that various kinds of informa- tional support and, for example, problem-related communica- tion might not be in the focus of elderly people's attention (cf. Krause & Shaw, 2000). In particular, when the potential support recipient is represented by a person who is not closely related to the participant (e.g., a neighbour such as in the scenario used for this study), older people might experience an inner conflict between supporting the victim (presumably inspired by their higher self-ascribed competence), on the one hand, and defending their own emotional resources and tranquility, on the other. The results presented here indicate that older adults try to resolve this ''approach-avoidance-conflict'' by behaving in a way that has an immediate palliative function for the victim by communicating comfort and concern, but refrain from support attempts that involve a profound and long-lasting involvement with the needy person. These antagonistic tendencies may merge in the ''typical'' ambivalent reaction pattern described by Herbert and Dunkel-Schetter (1992), which is more pronounced in older adults, as our results indicate. Clearly, more research is needed to gain evidence on this rather speculative notion. Most notably, supportive reactions should be compared between recipients outside versus inside the provider's family. Finally, it is remarkable to note that effects of participants' age were widely independent of those of protagonist's age, and, likewise, the age-relation of provider and recipient did not play an important role in predicting behavioural tendencies. Particularly, in line with previous findings (e.g., Karuza et al., 1990), the similarity hypothesis, as outlined above, could not be clearly confirmed in the present study. This might be due to the possibility that we have, in fact, failed to testperceptions of (dis)similarity, given that adults typically perceive themselves as younger than they actually are (e.g., Smith & Baltes, 1999). Accordingly, the older participants in particular might not have seen themselves as belonging to the same age groups as the older protagonist. Nevertheless, as the manipulation check revealed, protagonist's age was in fact a salient piece of information for most participants. The age variable prompted attributions of age-specific characteristics, i.e., describing the older protagonist as highly experienced in life, and even affected one of the situation-related construals (i.e., lowered feelings of pity) for the older protagonist. This latter result is in line with the assumption according to which an event is perceived as less serious, and thus evokes less pity, when it happens on time (as in the case of the older protagonist) as opposed to when it happens off-time (as in the case of the middle-aged protagonist; cf. Filipp et al., 2002). All in all, we cannot exclude that the possible effects of the protagonist's age were overridden by the specific characteristics of the given highly threatening situation itself, so that future studies may warrant the contrast between victims of more vs. less threatening life events. 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When you two meet, you sometimes talk about the latest news from each others' families. From these talks you know that your neighbour has been in poor health over the past few weeks. Now imagine that you would meet your neighbour again just as you were on your way home. In response to your question about how he is feeling he answers: ''Actually I don't really feel well right now. I've had problems with my digestion for some time, and I was in the hospital because of this recently. They found a malignant tumour in my colon. I am going to be operated on next week and maybe they will even have to do a colostomy. This really weighs on my mind. I have no idea how this will continue. I constantly think about why this had to happen to me of all people, and whether I did something wrong. When I see other people of my age--I think how healthy they all are. And me in contrast--I really don't believe that the doctors can really help. In any case it is easier when a person has people who stand by him. I am always thankful when I can talk to someone.''</meta-value></custom-meta></custom-meta-wrap></article-meta></front><back><notes><p>1 The complete research design consisted of two additional factors, <italic>coping-portrayal</italic> and <italic>mobilisation-behaviour</italic>, which were not in the focus of the present study.</p><p>2 We thank one anonymous reviewer for drawing our attention to this important point.</p></notes><ref-list><ref><citation citation-type="book" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Arbuckle, J.L.</surname></name> , & <name name-style="western"><surname>Wothke, W.</surname></name> (<year>1999</year>). <source>AMOS 4.0 user’s guide</source>. <publisher-loc>Chicago</publisher-loc>: <publisher-name>Smallwaters</publisher-name> .</citation></ref><ref><citation citation-type="journal" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Aymanns, P.</surname></name> , <name name-style="western"><surname>Filipp, S.-H.</surname></name> , & <name name-style="western"><surname>Klauer, T.</surname></name> (<year>1995</year>). <article-title>Family support and coping with cancer: Some determinants and adaptive correlates</article-title> . <source>British Journal of Social Psychology</source>, <volume>34</volume>, <fpage>107</fpage>–<lpage>124</lpage> .</citation></ref><ref><citation citation-type="journal" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Baltes, P.B.</surname></name> , & <name name-style="western"><surname>Staudinger, U. 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A few experimental studies indicate that the willingness to help others (e.g., by giving donations) increases with age. However, studies are lacking which extend these findings to less clear-cut situational contexts, for example, to supporting victims of a critical life event and which, in addition, systematically investigate social cognitive and affective reactions as mediators of age differences. Using a quasi-experimental design, N 1/4 452 older vs. middle-aged participants (61 to 78 vs. 34 to 52 years old, respectively) read fictitious scenarios describing a protagonist who asked for support in dealing with the diagnosis of a severe illness. Protagonist’s age was varied between participants (70 vs. 40 years). Independent of protagonist’s age, older participants (compared to middle-aged) were more willing to provide emotion-focused support, but were less willing to discuss the illness in detail (problem-focused support), and they showed a higher tendency to withdraw and to distance themselves from the protagonist. Age differences in emotion-focused support were mediated by the older adults’ higher self-ascribed competence in providing support.</abstract><relatedItem type="host"><titleInfo><title>International Journal of Behavioral Development</title></titleInfo><genre type="journal">journal</genre><identifier type="ISSN">0165-0254</identifier><identifier type="eISSN">1464-0651</identifier><identifier type="PublisherID">JBD</identifier><identifier type="PublisherID-hwp">spjbd</identifier><part><date>2003</date><detail type="volume"><caption>vol.</caption><number>27</number></detail><detail type="issue"><caption>no.</caption><number>3</number></detail><extent unit="pages"><start>232</start><end>242</end></extent></part></relatedItem><identifier type="istex">9869172A9A2FFB12348705F106A9C03990572A10</identifier><identifier type="DOI">10.1080/01650250244000308</identifier><identifier type="ArticleID">10.1080_01650250244000308</identifier><recordInfo><recordContentSource>SAGE</recordContentSource></recordInfo></mods></metadata><serie></serie></istex></record>Pour manipuler ce document sous Unix (Dilib)
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