ABSTRACT
Several investigators have recognized that many of the environmental factors that are associated with old age, (e.g., loss of roles, friends and family, or a shift in norms and expectations) are events that impact strongly on perceived competence and one's range of controllable outcomes (Bengston, 1973; Butler, 1967; Butler & Lewis, 1983; Neugarten & Gutman, 1958; Rodin & Langer, 1980). The work that my colleagues and I have done for the last several years has tested the hypothesis that if loss of control were produced by environmental challenges and stressors, it could have an especially strong health impact on persons in the later years of life because in general their homeostatic regulatory mechanisms are less effective (Timiras, 1972). This assumption is based on two kinds of evidence to be reviewed later. First, there are considerable data showing the impact of loss of control, regardless of age, on the etiology of disease and on the course of recovery from illness or surgical procedures. Second, there is evidence for increasing physical vulnerability and decline in old age. Despite this greater potential for decline, however, our hypothesis has led us to see biologically determined decline associated with old age as capable of being mitigated by manipulations of the environment that enhance perceived control. Indeed, from our work we assert that the degree of biologically mandated decline with aging has been overestimated because environmental and personal events associated with old age so commonly produce a loss of control.
