The Impact Of Implicit And Xplicit Attitudes Toward Aging On Geriatric Depression

Attitudes toward aging is one's overall evaluation of the elderly,senior life,and aging in positive-negative dimension.It is composed of implicit attitudes toward aging and explicit attitudes toward aging.A series of studies have showed that attitudes toward aging has a significant impact on old people's cognitive ability,physical and mental health.Geriatric depression is a common mental health issue that threatens the health and quality of the elderly's life.In order to explore the impact of attitudes toward aging on geriatric depression,four studies which adopted questionnaires and behavioral experiments were designed for participants who were aged 60 and above.In study 1,surveys were adopted to investigate the correlation between explicit attitudes toward aging and geriatric depression.In the surveys,the Attitudes to Aging Questionnaire(AAQ)and Geriatric Depression Scale(GDS)were used upon 310 participants from Shanghai.Study 2 used behavioral experiments to further explore the correlation between implicit attitudes toward aging and geriatric depression and the correlation between implicit attitudes toward aging and explicit attitudes.Single Category Implicit Association Test(SC-IAT)was adopted to study 28 participants.The results suggested:explicit attitudes toward aging has a negative correlation with geriatric depression;implicit attitudes toward aging has a negative correlation with geriatric depression;implicit attitudes toward aging is uncorrelated with explicit attitudes toward aging.Study 3 set up an experimental group and a control group based on study 1 and study 2,and direct-thinking tasks were adopted to activate positive attitudes toward aging in order to explore the methods of changing attitudes toward aging and the impact of attitudes toward aging on geriatric depression.AAQ,SC-IAT,and Center for Epidemiological Survey,Depression Scale(CES-D)were adopted to study 42 participants,and the results suggested an activation of the explicit attitudes toward aging and no effect on the implicit attitudes toward aging.Additionally,the change of explicit attitudes has no impact on geriatric depression.Study 4 was based on the results of study 3.It set up an experimental group and a control group,and contextual cueing was adopted to activate positive implicit attitudes toward aging in order to explore the methods of changing implicit attitudes toward aging and the impact of implicit attitudes toward aging on geriatric depression.Study 4 used the same instruments as study 3 upon 40 participants.The results suggested an activation of implicit attitudes toward aging and a negative correlation between positive implicit attitudes toward aging and geriatric depression scores.In conclusion,the findings demonstrated that:(1)inconsistency exists between implicit and explicit attitudes toward aging of elders in communities of Shanghai;(2)direct-thinking tasks can only change explicit attitudes toward aging,and contextual cueing can change implicit and explicit attitudes;(3)positive implicit attitudes toward aging can reduce geriatric depression scores.The results provide a new way to help old people change implicit attitudes toward.aging to fight against geriatric depression.