Objectifying the Old |
Monday Jan 29 2007
Granted I haven’t read the research itself, only a description of it which concludes:
"So it shows that the young and old are
motivated by different goals and, therefore, perceive and process
information differently because of the changes in goals across the
lifespan,” said Blanchard-Fields.
Now my experience as one of the ‘old’ is that, of course, I have different goals than when I was young. I accomplished most of those. But my goals don’t’ determine my judgment and they certainly don’t limit my capacity to function depending on my moods. The part of the report that really annoyed me was that people should “impart information differently to older adults”. How about speaking slower, talking louder, and (if you are talking to really old people or other minorities) using small words? I say bullshit.
"It may be the case that older adults
in a negative mood state are more motivated to downgrade their negative
emotions and, thus, not allocate enough processing time to focus on the
details of the situation. So this needs to be taken into consideration
when imparting information to older adults,” said Fredda
Blanchard-Fields, professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Psychology.
I have spoken about the subtle aspects of ageism and how it can
reinforce the overall culture of aging—specifically the idea that age
is about inevitable decline and loss. This kind of supposedly
‘scientific’ research is the same kind of deterministic thinking that
objectifies human beings, builds theories on shaky assessments, and
then designs questions to give answers to prove their theories. For anyone who reads the press release about the report, consider this for an alternative interpretation. Older people have learned the lesson Shakespeare so aptly penned in Hamlet (Act II, scene 2): “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” Further, they have enough worldly experience to give people the benefit of the doubt and not get lost in self-referential analyses of motivation and causality (which, at the end of the day, are simply assessments and never true or false). This is the kind of thinking that gives the field of management a bad name.
As one older person, I am very clear that I value and want people to tell me what they are observing — I want their unedited straight talk. When people speak to me based on their model of who I am, they are placing themselves in a ‘senior’ position to me, robbing me of dignity, and ultimately denying me the opportunity to interact with their point of view as an equal with something to say.
Serene Ambition is about understanding that as human beings we have a choice about who we are and our experience of living. If we want the future to be at least as full and fulfilling as the past and to expand our capacity for love, health, happiness, self-expression and being valued, then we need to beware of any attempts to sell us a bill of goods that we are different because of our age. There are differences to be sure, but their meaning is purely individual and social interpretation. They mean nothing in terms of what is possible in the future.
Written by Jim Selman at News
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