Psychosocial Theories

Human development is a multifaceted phenomenon. But to recognize that development has many facets is [Page 481]merely to begin to understand the phenomenon. Just what are the facets? How do they emerge in culture and in individuals? What are their adaptive functions? Decades of longitudinal research have made it clear that relatively few people follow the same path of individual development or ontogenesis. Although ontogenetic development is a lifelong process that extends from conception onward, it is believed to take on new meaning and significance during old age because of normative reductions in biological, cognitive, and social reserve capacities. The allocation of available resources, the maintenance of individual functioning, and the regulation of loss all constitute major adaptive tasks during later life. Understanding how older adults adapt successfully in the face of finite capacities and limited resources is a primary concern of psychosocial theories of aging.

Two psychosocial theories in particular—selection, optimization, and compensation (SOC) and socioemotional selectivity theory (SST)—have guided many studies of successful development. Derived from life span psychology, both theories represent descriptive–interpretive accounts of evidence obtained primarily from two types of research: (a) developmental research, or studies designed to indicate the ways in which individuals develop with age and particularly during adulthood, and (b) intervention research, or studies directed at identifying features of individual development that can be changed, refined, and maintained throughout adulthood.

Central to SOC theory is the assumption that, throughout life, individuals encounter both opportunities and constraints. According to the theory, the quintessence of successful individual development is found in the adaptive expression of gains and losses through the coordinated regulation of three central developmental processes: selection, optimization, and compensation. The first process, selection, gives direction to successful development by allocating finite resources to specific goal-directed behavior. Selection can occur in response to new demands and challenges (i.e., elective selection) or in response to actual or anticipated losses (i.e., loss-based selection). The second process, optimization, denotes the process of acquiring and refining relevant resources to attain desired outcomes in selective life domains. Finally, compensation concerns efforts to maintain normative functioning (e.g., crystallized or pragmatic abilities, motivation, positive health behaviors, sensorimotor functioning). Thus, a primary focus of the SOC model is to understand how older adults adapt successfully to the risks and vulnerabilities of advancing age through the orchestration of selection, optimization, and compensation strategies.

Although considered to be a metamodel of life span development, the SOC model has provided a general framework for understanding the nature and limits of what is referred to assuccessful aging. Supportive evidence for the key proposition that successful aging entails selective optimization with compensation comes from empirical research demonstrating the social–environmental foundation and adaptational significance of behavioral dependence and wisdom-related knowledge during adulthood and old age. Of particular interest to the study of dependency in old age has been the model of learned dependency. In this theory, the dependency of old age is not considered to be an inevitable consequence of decline; rather, it is attributed in large part to the differential contingencies present in the social environment. Unlike the model of learned helplessness, which views dependent behaviors as instantiations of dys-functionality, the model of learned dependency highlights the dynamic and adaptive interplay between losses and gains during later adulthood. The basic premise of the model is that although dependency may lead to a loss of autonomy, dependent behaviors can be highly functional when they are enacted to maintain or gain control over social contacts. Intervention studies with older adults have further established that the social behavior of partners can be modified to be more responsive to needs of the elderly for both autonomy and dependence.

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