ABSTRACT
Chown divides the psychological aspects of ageing into two parts – cognition and personality. The first of these includes variations in intelligence, the factors that influence it, learning and memory; the second part takes account of the effect growing old has on personality. The social and physical aspects of ageing do affect personality. It has sometimes been suggested that those who enter institutions in old age have dependent personalities. Events that precede entry to the institution are also significant and in particular people adapt their behaviour during the period after accepting admission to a home and before going in – Tobin and Lieberman call this ‘anticipatory institutionalization’. The prominence of passivity in Havighurst’s analysis is interesting, for Tobin and Lieberman find this the most significant factor in death or poor adjustment on entry to a residential home. They point out that ‘because the rewarded style is assertiveness, additional stress is placed on passive residents to change their typical adaptational pattern’.
