The purpose of this study is to see if older adults who experience problems with thought suppression tend to encounter greater difficulty deriving a sense of meaning in life. Data from a longitudinal nationwide survey of older people (N = 988) indicate that greater difficulty with thought suppression is associated with a decline in meaning over time. However, the findings further reveal that the relationship between thought suppression and meaning is nonlinear. More specifically, the results suggest that a sense of meaning in life declines at an accelerating rate across progressively higher levels of difficulty with thought suppression.
References
1.
AikenL. S.WestS. G. (1991). Multiple regression: Testing and interpreting interaction effects. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
2.
BattistaJ.AlmondR. (1973). The development of meaning in life. Psychiatry, 36, 409–427.
3.
BaumeisterR. F. (1991). Meanings of life. New York: Guilford.
4.
BlazerD. (2002). Depression in late life. (3rd ed.). New York: Springer.
5.
EriksonE. (1959). Identity and the life cycle. New York: International University Press.
6.
FranklV. E. (1984). Man's search for meaning. New York: Washington Square Press.
7.
KaneM. J.HasherL.StoltzfusE. R.ZacksR. T.ConnellyS. L. (1994). Inhibitory attentional mechanisms and aging. Psychology and Aging, 9, 103–112.
8.
KingG. A. (2004). The meaning of life experiences: Application of a meta-model to rehabilitation sciences and services. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 74, 72–88.
9.
KrauseN. (1994). Stressors in salient social roles and well-being in later life. Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences, 49, P137–P148.
10.
KrauseN. (2004). Stressors arising in highly valued roles, meaning in life, and the physical health status of older adults. Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences, 59B, S287–S297.
11.
MarraC.SilveriM. C.GainottiG. (2000). Predictors of cognitive decline in the early stage of probable Alzheimer's disease. Dementia and Geriatric Cognitive Disorders, 11, 212–218.
12.
MartinL. L.TesserA. (1989). Toward a motivational and structural theory of ruminative thought. In UlemanJ. S.BarghJ. A. (Eds.), Unintended thought (pp. 306–326). New York: Guilford.
13.
MaslowA. H. (1968). Toward a psychology of being (2nd ed.). New York: D. Van Nostrand Company.
14.
McAdamsD. P. (1993). Stories we live by: Personal myths and the making of the self. New York: Guilford.
15.
MurisP.MerckelbachH.HorselenbergR. (1996). Individual differences in thought suppression. The White Bear Suppression Inventory: Factor structure, reliability, validity and correlates. Behavioral Research and Therapy, 34, 501–513.
16.
PapageorgiouC.WellsA. (2004). Depressive rumination: Nature, theory, and treatment. New York: Wiley.
17.
PfeifferE. (1975). A short portable mental status questionnaire for the assessment of organic brain deficit in elderly patients. Journal of the American Geriatric Society, 23, 433–441.
18.
RadloffL. S. (1977). The CES-D Scale: A self-report depression scale for research in the general population. Applied Psychological Measurement, 1, 385–401.
19.
RekerG. T. (1997). Personal meaning, optimism, and choice: Existential predictors of depression in community and institutional elderly. The Gerontologist, 37, 709–716.
20.
SetterstenR. A. (2002). Social sources of meaning in life. In WeissR. S.BassS. A. (Eds.), Challenges of the Third Age: Meaning and purpose in later life (pp. 55–79). New York: Oxford University Press.
21.
TedeschiR. G.CalhounL. G. (2004). Posttraumatic growth: Conceptual foundations and empirical evidence. Psychological Inquiry, 15, 1–18.
22.
WegnerD. M. (1994). Ironic processes of mental control. Psychological Review, 101, 34–52.
23.
WegnerD. M.ZanakosS. (1994). Chronic thought suppression. Journal of Personality, 62, 615–640.
24.
WellsA.DaviesM. I. (1994). The thought control questionnaire: A measure of individual differences in the control of unwanted thoughts. Behavior Research and Therapy, 32, 871–878.
