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Aging and Proactivity in the Residential Environment M. Powell Lawton, Ph.D. Philadelphia Geriatric Center The purpose of this presentation is to explore the topic of the competence of older people in person-environment transactions. I shall hope to extend earlier thoughts on this subject by further discussion of the place of the personality of the older person in such transactions. I shall pay particular attention to behaviors relevant to older people's daily lives in their local habitats. I shall conclude that despite either reductions in competence due to biological aging or environmental decrements resulting from external forces, there is room for incremental improvement in psychological well-being through the medium of proactive behavior. Neighborhood and community level interventions, as well as one-to-one service interactions, can enhance this possibility. Person and Environment Enough has been written in the past two decades regarding personenvironment transactions to obviate any need to justify this topic as a fit one for the attention of psychologists. Nonetheless, despite the growth of environmental psychology, community psychology, and their relatives, I don't think we've seen a great many advances in our ability to identify, categorize, and measure the specific aspects of either the person or the environment that are central to these transactions. For example, a dozen years ago I bemoaned the absence of a taxonomy of the environment that might lead us as did the periodic table of the elements to better research in the dynamic aspects of person-environment relationships/ We haven't come very far Draft of invited address presented to the Division of Community Psychology (Division 27) at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association, New York City, Sept.l, 1987 since then. In the absence of advances on that side, then, it is worth a try to look on the person side to see if things are any better. It seems to me that they do look better because of the large body of research that has been done on personal control and related constructs. What has not been done is to relate this work adequately to the environment side of the transaction, a task that will comprise the core of this presentation. Let me begin by attempting to fill a curious void. Although perceptual psychology (Brunswick, Ames, Gibson, and many others) and environmental psychology have made liberal use of the term "transaction,11 a cursory search of recent literature and not-so-recent memory did not net a good terse definition. Let me try: A transaction is an interchange between the person and the environment whereby the person changes the environment and the environment simultaneously changes the person, the interchange itself constituting a process on a level specified neither by P or E but by its own dimensions and dynamics. The nature of the change may be either subjective or physical. The obvious facet of reciprocity is what we all understand when we use the term "transaction." Not so obvious, perhaps, is the energy-transforming facet, the assertion that, like the chemical combination of two elements, both person and environment change with the transaction. The person learns, is stimulated, alters the cognitive template for that environmental experience that will process that stimulus somewhat differently the next time it recurs, adopts a new behavior, and so on. The environment is changed at the very least because its physical stimulus character is processed by the person. Physical changes in the environment are the more obvious outcome of the -2- transaction, for example, a trimmed hedge, a scuffed shoe, a new house. Despite the obvious nature of this aspect of the P-E transaction, very little of the research effort in the environmental psychology of later life has given attention to the ways in which older people shape their environments and to the outcomes of such behavior in determining their overall well-being. As I develop this topic I shall try to address this area of neglect. Environment-Relevant Facets of the Person Taken in its most general sense, all behavior is a person-environment transaction and every person characteristic is a potential component of a P-E transaction. However, the trait, behavior, or transaction (variously viewed) of personal control has been a particularly productive construct in personality research and warrants further consideration in exploring competency in person-environment transactions. Personal control I am less willing to hazard a definition of "personal control" than I was in the case of "transaction" because this term and related ones have been used in so many different ways. This is not the context in which to review all of them, but it seems worthwhile to mention a distinction made by Deci and Ryan (1985) between locus of control and locus of causality. Locus of control was originally defined by Rotter ( ) as an expectancy regarding whether a person's behavior is controlled by reinforcement contingencies. Internal control (response-contingency belief) and external control (noncontingency belief) thus describe stable attitutinal propensities that are much like personality traits. deCharms (1981) and Ryan (1985) A suggest "locus of causality" as a descriptor of people's beliefs in the origins of their behavior. "Locus of causality...refers to the perceived -3- source of initiation and regulation of behavior" (Deci and Ryan, 1985, p.113). It is thus a dynamic motivational process. In turn, "personal control" then becomes a looser term that subsumes both self-initiatjson and behavior-contingent reinforcement. Deci and Ryan go on to make another useful distinction that takes these constructs more clearly into the transactional realm. They propose that events outside the person and causal orientations of the person have analogous dimensions. On the person side, the autonomy orientation leads the person to seek out and choose stimuli and courses of action in proactive, self-determinative fashion. The control orientation leads the person toward internal or external guidelines and standards for behavior, although the motivation for such behavior may originate in either internal or external sources of compulsion. The impersonal orientation, with the implication that behvaior is beyong the intentional control of the person, is very similar to the Rotter external control construct. Deci and Ryan suggest that autonomy-oriented people are vigilant to information events, that is, aspects of the environment that contain information about resources of potential useto the person -- these eem similar to what Zautra and Reich ( ) have called "desire events." Controlling events, "press" in Murray's (1938) terms, or "demand events" in Zautra and Reich's, are those that constitute pressure toward particulare behaviors or outcomes, and are most consonant with the control personal orientation. Finally, amotivating events, which convey a sense of subject incompetence, appear to be the lot of those with the impersonal orientation. Leaving out the somewhat problematic amotivating - impersonal transaction, the reamining two transactions are paradigmatic of those that are very relevant to the way older people conduct their lives in their residential environments rather than use the verbally clumsy terms autonomy - informational'1 and control - controlling i shall go back to some con ceptualizations and nomenclature of my own and use the term environmental proactivity to describe the transaction whereby a person with a self - initiated motive searches for environment for means of exercising the motive environmental docility in turn is the transaction where internal or external demands provide the guide and motive power for the behavior i began my thoughts on environment and aging in 1970 with the statement of the environmental docility hypothesis the suggestion that as competence diminished environmental press would assume an increasing role as the determinant of subjective and behavioral outcomes aging as a process that ultimately involves biological decline was seen as a potential contributor to diminished competence this line of thinking has been particularly useful in providing a conceptual basis for the design of environments for impaired older people although the docility hypothesis was certainly not meant to suggest that all older people should be considered impaired there was an obvious neglect of the more positive side of the p-e transaction the side of proactivity active choice and deliberate creation of rewarding environments in accordance with some research findings reported by lieberman and tobin ( ), it was possible to formulate the environmental proactivity hypothes^s^which states that as personal competence increases the environment becomes an increasingly productive source of stimulation enrichment and preference satisfying potential lawton ). in the deci and ryan terms the 5
Object Description
| Title | Aging and Proactivity in the Residential Environment |
| Subject | environment; well-being; community services; personal-environment transaction; environmental proactivity; older people; environmental psychology; psychological well-being; aging; aged; personal satisfaction |
| Subject Keyword | environment; well-being; community services; personal-environment transaction; environmental proactivity |
| Subject LCSH | older people; environmental psychology; psychological well-being; aging |
| Subject MeSH | aged; environment; personal satisfaction |
| Description | Annual Meeting of the American Psychological Association, Division of Community Psychology (September 1, 1987 : New York, NY) |
| Abstract | A person-environment transaction is an interchange between a person and their environment during which the person changes the environment and the environment simultaneously changes the person. This presentation looks at the competence of the elderly in person-environment transactions. Dr. Lawton's "environmental proactivity" hypothesis proposes that a person with self-initiated motives searches for an environment for means of exercising that motive. Older adults who display this proactivity have a high level of competence, generally defined as a quality of functioning in biological health, cognition, and sensory motor function. Conversely, in the "environmental docility" hypothesis, internal or external demands provide the guidance and motivation for a person's behavior, perhaps a more common condition among the elderly experiencing physical and mental decline. Competence, however, can improve when a person tries to shape their own environment, whether in their home, neighborhood, or the larger community. Community and grass roots organizations can use this information to increase older adults' participation in social actions. // No references, and there are some handwritten notes. --AJL |
| Creator | Lawton, M. Powell, 1923-2001 |
| Publisher | Polisher Research Institute |
| Contributors Principal Investigators | Rachel R. Resnick |
| Contributors Research Assistants | Karen C. Kohn; Nicole Snyder; Amanda J. Lehning; Arthur Shum |
| Contributors Reviewers | Philip D. Sloane; Maggie Calkins; Laura Gitlin; Jeanne Teresi; Patricia Parmelee |
| Physical Description | 17 p. |
| Date | 1987 |
| Type | Text |
| Original Format | Publications |
| Digital Format | application/pdf |
| Class Number LCC | HD7287 |
| Class Number NLMC | WT 145 |
| Class Number DDC | 155.9084 |
| Language | English |
| Relation | Lawton, M.P. (1980). Environment and Aging. Monterey, CA: Brooks-Cole. Reprinted, Center for the Study of Aging, Albany, NY, 1986. // Lawton, M.P., Byerts, T.O., & Windley, P. (Eds.) (1982). Environmental Theory and Aging. New York: Springer. // Lawton, M.P., Patnaik, B., & Kleban, M.H. (1976). The ecology of adaptation to a new environment. International Journal of Aging and Human Development, 7, 15-26. // Lawton, M.P., Brody, E.M., & Turner-Massey, P. (1978). The relationship of environmental factors to changes in well being. The Gerontologist, 18, 133-137. // Lawton, M.P. (1983). Environment and other determinants of wellbeing in older people. The Gerontologist, 23, 349-357. // Lawton, M.P. (1990). Residential environment and self-directedness among older people. American Psychologist, 45, 638-640. |
| Rights | http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
| Contributing Institution | Polisher Research Institute |
| Sponsorship | This Digital Object is provided in a collection that is included in POWER Library: Pennsylvania Photos and Documents, which is funded by the Office of Commonwealth Libraries of Pennsylvania/Pennsylvania Department of Education. |
| Full Text | Aging and Proactivity in the Residential Environment M. Powell Lawton, Ph.D. Philadelphia Geriatric Center The purpose of this presentation is to explore the topic of the competence of older people in person-environment transactions. I shall hope to extend earlier thoughts on this subject by further discussion of the place of the personality of the older person in such transactions. I shall pay particular attention to behaviors relevant to older people's daily lives in their local habitats. I shall conclude that despite either reductions in competence due to biological aging or environmental decrements resulting from external forces, there is room for incremental improvement in psychological well-being through the medium of proactive behavior. Neighborhood and community level interventions, as well as one-to-one service interactions, can enhance this possibility. Person and Environment Enough has been written in the past two decades regarding personenvironment transactions to obviate any need to justify this topic as a fit one for the attention of psychologists. Nonetheless, despite the growth of environmental psychology, community psychology, and their relatives, I don't think we've seen a great many advances in our ability to identify, categorize, and measure the specific aspects of either the person or the environment that are central to these transactions. For example, a dozen years ago I bemoaned the absence of a taxonomy of the environment that might lead us as did the periodic table of the elements to better research in the dynamic aspects of person-environment relationships/ We haven't come very far Draft of invited address presented to the Division of Community Psychology (Division 27) at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association, New York City, Sept.l, 1987 since then. In the absence of advances on that side, then, it is worth a try to look on the person side to see if things are any better. It seems to me that they do look better because of the large body of research that has been done on personal control and related constructs. What has not been done is to relate this work adequately to the environment side of the transaction, a task that will comprise the core of this presentation. Let me begin by attempting to fill a curious void. Although perceptual psychology (Brunswick, Ames, Gibson, and many others) and environmental psychology have made liberal use of the term "transaction,11 a cursory search of recent literature and not-so-recent memory did not net a good terse definition. Let me try: A transaction is an interchange between the person and the environment whereby the person changes the environment and the environment simultaneously changes the person, the interchange itself constituting a process on a level specified neither by P or E but by its own dimensions and dynamics. The nature of the change may be either subjective or physical. The obvious facet of reciprocity is what we all understand when we use the term "transaction." Not so obvious, perhaps, is the energy-transforming facet, the assertion that, like the chemical combination of two elements, both person and environment change with the transaction. The person learns, is stimulated, alters the cognitive template for that environmental experience that will process that stimulus somewhat differently the next time it recurs, adopts a new behavior, and so on. The environment is changed at the very least because its physical stimulus character is processed by the person. Physical changes in the environment are the more obvious outcome of the -2- transaction, for example, a trimmed hedge, a scuffed shoe, a new house. Despite the obvious nature of this aspect of the P-E transaction, very little of the research effort in the environmental psychology of later life has given attention to the ways in which older people shape their environments and to the outcomes of such behavior in determining their overall well-being. As I develop this topic I shall try to address this area of neglect. Environment-Relevant Facets of the Person Taken in its most general sense, all behavior is a person-environment transaction and every person characteristic is a potential component of a P-E transaction. However, the trait, behavior, or transaction (variously viewed) of personal control has been a particularly productive construct in personality research and warrants further consideration in exploring competency in person-environment transactions. Personal control I am less willing to hazard a definition of "personal control" than I was in the case of "transaction" because this term and related ones have been used in so many different ways. This is not the context in which to review all of them, but it seems worthwhile to mention a distinction made by Deci and Ryan (1985) between locus of control and locus of causality. Locus of control was originally defined by Rotter ( ) as an expectancy regarding whether a person's behavior is controlled by reinforcement contingencies. Internal control (response-contingency belief) and external control (noncontingency belief) thus describe stable attitutinal propensities that are much like personality traits. deCharms (1981) and Ryan (1985) A suggest "locus of causality" as a descriptor of people's beliefs in the origins of their behavior. "Locus of causality...refers to the perceived -3- source of initiation and regulation of behavior" (Deci and Ryan, 1985, p.113). It is thus a dynamic motivational process. In turn, "personal control" then becomes a looser term that subsumes both self-initiatjson and behavior-contingent reinforcement. Deci and Ryan go on to make another useful distinction that takes these constructs more clearly into the transactional realm. They propose that events outside the person and causal orientations of the person have analogous dimensions. On the person side, the autonomy orientation leads the person to seek out and choose stimuli and courses of action in proactive, self-determinative fashion. The control orientation leads the person toward internal or external guidelines and standards for behavior, although the motivation for such behavior may originate in either internal or external sources of compulsion. The impersonal orientation, with the implication that behvaior is beyong the intentional control of the person, is very similar to the Rotter external control construct. Deci and Ryan suggest that autonomy-oriented people are vigilant to information events, that is, aspects of the environment that contain information about resources of potential useto the person -- these eem similar to what Zautra and Reich ( ) have called "desire events." Controlling events, "press" in Murray's (1938) terms, or "demand events" in Zautra and Reich's, are those that constitute pressure toward particulare behaviors or outcomes, and are most consonant with the control personal orientation. Finally, amotivating events, which convey a sense of subject incompetence, appear to be the lot of those with the impersonal orientation. Leaving out the somewhat problematic amotivating - impersonal transaction, the reamining two transactions are paradigmatic of those that are very relevant to the way older people conduct their lives in their residential environments rather than use the verbally clumsy terms autonomy - informational'1 and control - controlling i shall go back to some con ceptualizations and nomenclature of my own and use the term environmental proactivity to describe the transaction whereby a person with a self - initiated motive searches for environment for means of exercising the motive environmental docility in turn is the transaction where internal or external demands provide the guide and motive power for the behavior i began my thoughts on environment and aging in 1970 with the statement of the environmental docility hypothesis the suggestion that as competence diminished environmental press would assume an increasing role as the determinant of subjective and behavioral outcomes aging as a process that ultimately involves biological decline was seen as a potential contributor to diminished competence this line of thinking has been particularly useful in providing a conceptual basis for the design of environments for impaired older people although the docility hypothesis was certainly not meant to suggest that all older people should be considered impaired there was an obvious neglect of the more positive side of the p-e transaction the side of proactivity active choice and deliberate creation of rewarding environments in accordance with some research findings reported by lieberman and tobin ( ), it was possible to formulate the environmental proactivity hypothes^s^which states that as personal competence increases the environment becomes an increasingly productive source of stimulation enrichment and preference satisfying potential lawton ). in the deci and ryan terms the 5 informational context is most congruent with the autonomous orientation intrinsic motivation and a clear sense of the relationship between one's own behavior and the rewarding of that behavior are part and parcel of environ mental proactivity competence and proactivity although two hypotheses are used to generalize these points they are not meant to be independent of one another describing separately the up and down sides without regard to one another the discussion of residential behavior that follows will continue to develop ideas about how personal competence relates to environmental proactivity i shall illustrate how there are few levels of competence so low as to make proactivity impossible before this discussion begins however i'd like to make one more point about proactivity and psychological outcomes research in coping and stress has intimated though perhaps not yet with total empirical confirmation that there are gains to the person's mental health consequent to simply making an effort to cope with the stress some recent results from the yery interesting program of research on daily events being reported by john reich and alex zautra constitute a major demonstration of the value of what in common parlance we might call making the effort their research involved people's reporting the occurrence of both demand and desire events and then indicating whether they followed the simple occurrence of this event with a some form of action not only did they demonstrate that people who followed up a desired event with a behavior were more likely to be satisfied with the outcome and show better psychological well-being but those who responded more often to demand events showed greater satisfaction and a higher level of positive affect reich zautra and hill 1987 clearly 6 doing something about an opportunity to engage in a desired activity ought to have a favorable outcome and this is consistent with the proactivity hypothesis however traditional intrinsic-motivation theory might not make the same prediction for a demand-event response the reich et al . finding however is consistent with the prediction of the docility hypothesis that a competent response to an external press will be self-affirming and therefore elevate psychological well-being i shall refer to a behavior that makes an impact on the environment chougn i^m not itsssshsi self-initiatedas secondary proactivity residential behavior in moving to the realm of residential behavior the general assertion is made that attempts to shape one's own environment are beneficial to the older person first because the user-created environment is more congruent with the person ' s needj^snd^egi^d because of the self affirming quality of intrinsic motivation and the exercise of proactivity a personal competence will be a major determinant of the form that pro active behavior can take however in my earlier writing i have defined competence as the evaluated quality of functioning in the basic areas of biological health cognition and sensory-motor function while this limited definition will suffice for most purposes one would feel that ultimately some construct like ego strength should be added to the definition i suggest that an appropriate match between competence and environ mental action may be at least partly specified in terms of two considerations first there is a rough parallel between the sociospatial scale of an activity and the level of competence required to perform it effectively it is convenient to concretize such a continuum in order of increasing 7 complexity as beginning with the dwelling unit and moving successively through the block the neighborhood and the community my assertion is that increasing personal resources are required as the life-space for pro active behavior moves from the micro to the macrospatial level the second consideration involves the degree to which the motivation for proactive behavior originates in the person versus the degree to which it originates externally decharms ( ) has drawn this dichotomy very sharply in referring to origin versus person11 behavior yet the reich et al . ( ) finding and our more general knowledge about the effectiveness of demonstrated competence even when not originating in the person makes it desirable to enlarge the definition of environmental proactivity to include behavior that changes the environment even if the behavior is not intrinsi cally motivated -- therefore my term secondary proactivity opportunities for environmental proactivity the substantial amount of research in environment and aging ha^l identified many aspects of the physical and social environment that are important to the well-being of the older person few have been studied from the point of view of the agency of the effort by which they are attained that is whether the older user was the initiator or the passive recipient or the differential quality of outcome that might be attributable to that agency however let me illustrate with a couple of research findings how such phenomena can be studied the first is on the level of the dwelling unit specifically apartments in a sample of age-segregated planned housing environments that i studied some years ago lawton ). we noted a great deal of variation in whether a tenant kept her apartment door open to the main corridor we noted during the course of time-sampled behavior maps whether 8 the door was open or closed and we found that the frequency of open doors was greater among tenants with higher levels of social behavior we thus inferred that the open door was a social invitation further it was a very easy way to alter the dwelling unit environment in such a way as to promote a desired goal i.e a fellow tenant saying hello or dropping in. It was very easy for such shaping tenants of relatively low competence another finding in fact the one that led initially to the a formulation of the environmental docility hypothesis was that tenants in poorest health were likely to limit their sociometric choices to their most proximate neighbors while the healthier chose their friends from a variety of different locations in the building thus the open door being easy to manage was especially beneficial to the least competent who were very locally dependent for social relationships on the level of block-related behavior or at least behavior external to the dwelling unit is a classic study by pollack and patterson 1980 of the fear of crime among older residents of single-family homes they counted all observable instances of personalization of the exteriors of their homes whether by signs added decorations fences and so on they argued that such augmentations of the home and front yard were partly attempts at territorial marking whose social message was that the territory was important to the occupant and likely to be kept under surveillance and defended as predicted in the face of a constant actual exposure to crime risk those with the adorned homes expressed less anxiety about being victimized i'd like at this point to move systematically across the continuum of 9 sociospatial scale and discuss some examples of proactive residential behavior noting where appropriate how such opportunities might vary with the competence of the person the dwelling unit one's own dwelling unit is the easiest spatial area to control geronto logical literature has been rich in studies that document how one's home is used in the service of one's own needs among widows (O'Bryant ) widowers (Rubinstein ), and rural residents of west virginia rowles ), for example whole lives are spent in searching the housing market choosing a location and a home in that location and furnishing and augmenting the home some individuals are extremely proactive in seeing to their home maintenance and in personalizing their homes with their unique stamps not all such within-dwelling-unit behavior requires high levels o competence however for example at least two studies newman and sherman ; wapner ) have shown that residents display of personal possessions in a nursing home is associated with better adjustment my own favorite example came from a study we did several years ago of the homes of very impaired older people living alone who were clients of an in-home services agency these services were literally the factor that enabled them to stay in the community rather than enter a nursing home our qualitative study was to determine simple ways of making the households more livable as we observed the 50 homes we began to identify a constel lation of physical arrangements for which the term control center was exactly appropriate the control center included a chair or wheelchair placed in the living room to afford the best possible view through the front 10 window within easy line of sight to the front door the television set 4 9 and radio were in easy reach and there were usually surfaces to both left and right of the chair on which needed or valued articles were placed such as food drink medicines reading matter photographs letters small objects and so on these clients rarely left the home and many went upstairs only to sleep if at all their physical and social space was thus greatly restricted but what we might think of as the density of control of their space was maximized given the magnitude of their impairment the control was achieved by maximizing the amount of incoming information lines of sight tv reading material and the readiness of access to a small number of top priority resources while we do not know the full history of the creation of the control center it is clear that some portions of them were totally self initiated for example where 6 would be located or what objects would be placed on the tables while other components such as the procurement of a good quality chair probably were promoted with the help of others the grand architecture of the control center was in the hands of very impaired people attempting to maximize their self-determination in summary a person's life within her own dwelling unit affords a maximum range of opportunities for proactivity of a degree appropriate to the person's level of competence at least until major cognitive impairment might intrude this relatively high elasticity of the household environment in response to individual needs is one major reason for the strong attachment of older people to their homes 11 the neighborhood block to speak of the block as a member of the continuum of environmental scale no doubt expresses an urban bias but of course when you think about it the population as a whole displays an urban bias in its locational choices like people of all ages about two-thirds of all older people live in metropolitan areas where the neighborhood block is a relevant concept behavior and psychological orientations at the block level are by definition more complex than those within the dwelling unit. Behavior in one's block often involves other people. Using this physical space requires physical ambulation. Thus, other things being equal, the exercise for proactivity at the block level requires a higher level of competence than does within dwelling unit activity. When one thinks of residential behavior on the block level that can elevate well-being, there rae many possibilities: A crime watch, control of litter, maintenance of grassy areas or bus stops, the monitoring of one's own neighbors' home exteriors ni the interest of preserving local quality. "Neighboring" as an activity is most likely at a block level. Long-term neighbor-friends exchange services, especially those called for in emergencies. One might think of volunteered services as an aspect of the social environment that is capable of being enhanced by formal organizational effort. In fact, some of the more successful grass-root interventions have been based at the block level. The sunset district project in san francisco for example had at its core the recruitment of an unusually competent older person to act as a block captain for each block face of a circumscribed neighborhood tetesgh fhe block captain's goal was to know every older neighbor and monitor especially the needs of impaired older people jhe vehicle for attaining this goal was the monthly distribution face-to-face of a sunset district newsletter containing information of interest to local older people. 12 the proactivity of the block captain is obvious and so is the requirement of a very high level of competence the block captain constitutes the elite however the second level of proactivity an externally-motivated effort to change the environment has the potential of involving more than the elite the crime watch and other block-based activities have exactly that potential for enlisting the help of others than the elite although they may not be the originators of the activity doing something like taking a turn visiting one neighbor or displaying a concerned neighbors sticker has the potential for affirming their sense of personal agency another aspect of proactivity is more subtle for many people the decision regarding where to live is an ongoing continually negotiated decision rather than a discrete one accomplished at one point in time involvement in block activities is one way of keeping up one's ability to decide whether it is time to consider moving or to remain in place -- the deci and ryan a informational c6ritext even if one is the recipient of a neighbor's favors or an impaired person being visited on schedule by a block captain such contacts fortify one's access to information that could lead to action and the redesign of one's own environment thus on the block level there is opportunity for the small-scale development of proactivity as leader pd volunteer in helping others i ffere is opportunity for a larger number to be involved in re-creation of their pwn environments through opportunities created primarily by others. For these people benefits accrue because such reactive participation reaffirms their sense of competence despite their behavior prrimarily in the environmental docility mode 13 neighborhood and community without meaning to deny the long-recognized differences between neighbor hood and community they will be discussed together as the largest scale of the sociospatial environment at such a megascale change and interventions regarding the physical environment must be mediated through larger social and institutional structures such complexity means that the highest level of proactivity is usually reserved for the few among the elderly who because of both good health in old age and a life history of efficacy and sometimes privilege have enough energy and skill to initiate social change the grey panthers and its notable individual members come to mind as representative of the highest level of proactivity volunteer activity can also take such a form the arenas for proactivity are various certainly effective at the neighborhood and municipal level are approaches to ward leaders councilpeople and politicians while national platforms and visits to the highest officials have not been unusual for the grey panthers it is worth considering in some detail some examples of activities that can reshape larger apsects of the residential environment many of them affecting life at the block and dwelling-unit level as well town councils and planning commissions may sometimes be highly responsible to the concerns of groups of older people some examples are - limitations of types of traffic allowed on a street - the placement of stop signs pedestrian signals traffic lights and their timing - the aesthetics of land uses for example junk dumping signs noise etc 14 - public transportation routes timing equipment waiting areas - age-relevant practices of police fire rubbish collection etc - sidewalk maintenance - regulation of land use for shopping and other amenities versus disameni ties like bars - air and water quality e.g air pollution that can reach occasional critical levels for vulnerable people - location and use of parks and other public spaces - community-wide decisions about service areas for health and social agencies - provision of home maintenance and rehabilitation services - new housing construction programs group action by older people is often very effective at the neighborhood and community level a philadelphia group the action alliance for senior citizens can usually get media coverage for a demonstration in support of additional security in public housing such proactivity is most effective when clearly led by older people and when the participants are well-informed about the topic i might mention a negative example that occurred in a rezoning petition in which i participated in chicago the catholic charities and a small catholic college in a working-class area had planned a federally i subsidized housing project for the elderly in a realy ideal location a corner of the campus near transportation and shopping facilities un fortunately the neighbors with the help of the alderman and the parish priest opposed the petition under the covert fear that subsidized housing might be a foot in the door for racial mixing of the all white neighborhood 15 a local senior center had brought a busload of older people to the hearing which lasted most of the day of course they seemed yery formidable and greatly outnumbered the neighbor contingent unfortunately the zoning commission chairman at one point chose an older man at random from the audience and asked him to explain the concern that led to his presence his answer was m i don't know they told me to get on the bus and i've been here all day the planned housing was turned down this tragic-comic incident illustrates quite well the difference between effective secondary proactivity and pawn behavior regrettably the failure to provide enough information to attain a real sense of involvement doomed the use of the older people at the zoning hearing to a pawn level this incident also forces us to think carefully about how formal professionalism and grass-roots action by older people may interact in the end my own feeling is that although the number of older people inclined to lead proactive efforts toward environmental change at the neighborhood and community levels will grow as the highly-educated cohorts move into old age these will always constitute an elite thus secondary proactivity is likely always to be the dominant mode we have only begun to use the potential of older people in this effort community psychologists can give this effort further assistance through research that probes the older participant's feelings of efficacy as the result of engaging in secondary proactivity secondary proactivity much more often than not may require some partner ship with formal organizational effort conducted at least in part by the people who are not aged here is where we have the least knowledge to guide us how can the grass-root concerns of older people be communicated to and used by organizations with expertise in social action how can the older consumer 16 remain truly informed participate and share in the shaping of the effort the best beginning point is probably the sensitization of the professionals to some of the concepts with which this presentation began that is the power of intrinsic motivation and self-chosen action this is probably old hat to community psychologists who have been concerned for decades with constructs like empowerment however the elderly as a group have not received a fair share of your concern in addition it is yery easy to be unaware of the richness of the opportunities offered by the residential environment for self-determinatige behavior and how such proactivity can fortify the well-being of older people i hope for future application of the principles of community psychology to the transactions between older people and their environments 17 |
| Contributors Authors | M. Powell Lawton |
| Access Rights | fair use rights |
Description
| Title | Aging and Proactivity in the Residential Environment (pages 1-5) |
| Subject | environment; well-being; community services; personal-environment transaction; environmental proactivity; older people; environmental psychology; psychological well-being; aging; aged; personal satisfaction |
| Subject Keyword | environment; well-being; community services; personal-environment transaction; environmental proactivity |
| Subject LCSH | older people; environmental psychology; psychological well-being; aging |
| Subject MeSH | aged; environment; personal satisfaction |
| Description | Annual Meeting of the American Psychological Association, Division of Community Psychology (September 1, 1987 : New York, NY) |
| Abstract | A person-environment transaction is an interchange between a person and their environment during which the person changes the environment and the environment simultaneously changes the person. This presentation looks at the competence of the elderly in person-environment transactions. Dr. Lawton's "environmental proactivity" hypothesis proposes that a person with self-initiated motives searches for an environment for means of exercising that motive. Older adults who display this proactivity have a high level of competence, generally defined as a quality of functioning in biological health, cognition, and sensory motor function. Conversely, in the "environmental docility" hypothesis, internal or external demands provide the guidance and motivation for a person's behavior, perhaps a more common condition among the elderly experiencing physical and mental decline. Competence, however, can improve when a person tries to shape their own environment, whether in their home, neighborhood, or the larger community. Community and grass roots organizations can use this information to increase older adults' participation in social actions. // No references, and there are some handwritten notes. --AJL |
| Creator | Lawton, M. Powell, 1923-2001 |
| Publisher | Polisher Research Institute |
| Contributors Principal Investigators | Rachel R. Resnick |
| Contributors Research Assistants | Karen C. Kohn; Nicole Snyder; Amanda J. Lehning; Arthur Shum |
| Contributors Reviewers | Philip D. Sloane; Maggie Calkins; Laura Gitlin; Jeanne Teresi; Patricia Parmelee |
| Physical Description | 5 p. |
| Date | 1987 |
| Type | Text |
| Original Format | Publications |
| Digital Format | application/pdf |
| Identifier | 1987AgiPro1.pdf |
| Class Number LCC | HD7287 |
| Class Number NLMC | WT 145 |
| Class Number DDC | 155.9084 |
| Language | English |
| Relation | Lawton, M.P. (1980). Environment and Aging. Monterey, CA: Brooks-Cole. Reprinted, Center for the Study of Aging, Albany, NY, 1986. // Lawton, M.P., Byerts, T.O., & Windley, P. (Eds.) (1982). Environmental Theory and Aging. New York: Springer. // Lawton, M.P., Patnaik, B., & Kleban, M.H. (1976). The ecology of adaptation to a new environment. International Journal of Aging and Human Development, 7, 15-26. // Lawton, M.P., Brody, E.M., & Turner-Massey, P. (1978). The relationship of environmental factors to changes in well being. The Gerontologist, 18, 133-137. // Lawton, M.P. (1983). Environment and other determinants of wellbeing in older people. The Gerontologist, 23, 349-357. // Lawton, M.P. (1990). Residential environment and self-directedness among older people. American Psychologist, 45, 638-640. |
| Rights | http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
| Contributing Institution | Polisher Research Institute |
| Sponsorship | This Digital Object is provided in a collection that is included in POWER Library: Pennsylvania Photos and Documents, which is funded by the Office of Commonwealth Libraries of Pennsylvania/Pennsylvania Department of Education. |
| Full Text | Aging and Proactivity in the Residential Environment M. Powell Lawton, Ph.D. Philadelphia Geriatric Center The purpose of this presentation is to explore the topic of the competence of older people in person-environment transactions. I shall hope to extend earlier thoughts on this subject by further discussion of the place of the personality of the older person in such transactions. I shall pay particular attention to behaviors relevant to older people's daily lives in their local habitats. I shall conclude that despite either reductions in competence due to biological aging or environmental decrements resulting from external forces, there is room for incremental improvement in psychological well-being through the medium of proactive behavior. Neighborhood and community level interventions, as well as one-to-one service interactions, can enhance this possibility. Person and Environment Enough has been written in the past two decades regarding personenvironment transactions to obviate any need to justify this topic as a fit one for the attention of psychologists. Nonetheless, despite the growth of environmental psychology, community psychology, and their relatives, I don't think we've seen a great many advances in our ability to identify, categorize, and measure the specific aspects of either the person or the environment that are central to these transactions. For example, a dozen years ago I bemoaned the absence of a taxonomy of the environment that might lead us as did the periodic table of the elements to better research in the dynamic aspects of person-environment relationships/ We haven't come very far Draft of invited address presented to the Division of Community Psychology (Division 27) at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association, New York City, Sept.l, 1987 since then. In the absence of advances on that side, then, it is worth a try to look on the person side to see if things are any better. It seems to me that they do look better because of the large body of research that has been done on personal control and related constructs. What has not been done is to relate this work adequately to the environment side of the transaction, a task that will comprise the core of this presentation. Let me begin by attempting to fill a curious void. Although perceptual psychology (Brunswick, Ames, Gibson, and many others) and environmental psychology have made liberal use of the term "transaction,11 a cursory search of recent literature and not-so-recent memory did not net a good terse definition. Let me try: A transaction is an interchange between the person and the environment whereby the person changes the environment and the environment simultaneously changes the person, the interchange itself constituting a process on a level specified neither by P or E but by its own dimensions and dynamics. The nature of the change may be either subjective or physical. The obvious facet of reciprocity is what we all understand when we use the term "transaction." Not so obvious, perhaps, is the energy-transforming facet, the assertion that, like the chemical combination of two elements, both person and environment change with the transaction. The person learns, is stimulated, alters the cognitive template for that environmental experience that will process that stimulus somewhat differently the next time it recurs, adopts a new behavior, and so on. The environment is changed at the very least because its physical stimulus character is processed by the person. Physical changes in the environment are the more obvious outcome of the -2- transaction, for example, a trimmed hedge, a scuffed shoe, a new house. Despite the obvious nature of this aspect of the P-E transaction, very little of the research effort in the environmental psychology of later life has given attention to the ways in which older people shape their environments and to the outcomes of such behavior in determining their overall well-being. As I develop this topic I shall try to address this area of neglect. Environment-Relevant Facets of the Person Taken in its most general sense, all behavior is a person-environment transaction and every person characteristic is a potential component of a P-E transaction. However, the trait, behavior, or transaction (variously viewed) of personal control has been a particularly productive construct in personality research and warrants further consideration in exploring competency in person-environment transactions. Personal control I am less willing to hazard a definition of "personal control" than I was in the case of "transaction" because this term and related ones have been used in so many different ways. This is not the context in which to review all of them, but it seems worthwhile to mention a distinction made by Deci and Ryan (1985) between locus of control and locus of causality. Locus of control was originally defined by Rotter ( ) as an expectancy regarding whether a person's behavior is controlled by reinforcement contingencies. Internal control (response-contingency belief) and external control (noncontingency belief) thus describe stable attitutinal propensities that are much like personality traits. deCharms (1981) and Ryan (1985) A suggest "locus of causality" as a descriptor of people's beliefs in the origins of their behavior. "Locus of causality...refers to the perceived -3- source of initiation and regulation of behavior" (Deci and Ryan, 1985, p.113). It is thus a dynamic motivational process. In turn, "personal control" then becomes a looser term that subsumes both self-initiatjson and behavior-contingent reinforcement. Deci and Ryan go on to make another useful distinction that takes these constructs more clearly into the transactional realm. They propose that events outside the person and causal orientations of the person have analogous dimensions. On the person side, the autonomy orientation leads the person to seek out and choose stimuli and courses of action in proactive, self-determinative fashion. The control orientation leads the person toward internal or external guidelines and standards for behavior, although the motivation for such behavior may originate in either internal or external sources of compulsion. The impersonal orientation, with the implication that behvaior is beyong the intentional control of the person, is very similar to the Rotter external control construct. Deci and Ryan suggest that autonomy-oriented people are vigilant to information events, that is, aspects of the environment that contain information about resources of potential useto the person -- these eem similar to what Zautra and Reich ( ) have called "desire events." Controlling events, "press" in Murray's (1938) terms, or "demand events" in Zautra and Reich's, are those that constitute pressure toward particulare behaviors or outcomes, and are most consonant with the control personal orientation. Finally, amotivating events, which convey a sense of subject incompetence, appear to be the lot of those with the impersonal orientation. Leaving out the somewhat problematic amotivating - impersonal transaction, the reamining two transactions are paradigmatic of those that are very relevant to the way older people conduct their lives in their residential environments rather than use the verbally clumsy terms autonomy - informational'1 and control - controlling i shall go back to some con ceptualizations and nomenclature of my own and use the term environmental proactivity to describe the transaction whereby a person with a self - initiated motive searches for environment for means of exercising the motive environmental docility in turn is the transaction where internal or external demands provide the guide and motive power for the behavior i began my thoughts on environment and aging in 1970 with the statement of the environmental docility hypothesis the suggestion that as competence diminished environmental press would assume an increasing role as the determinant of subjective and behavioral outcomes aging as a process that ultimately involves biological decline was seen as a potential contributor to diminished competence this line of thinking has been particularly useful in providing a conceptual basis for the design of environments for impaired older people although the docility hypothesis was certainly not meant to suggest that all older people should be considered impaired there was an obvious neglect of the more positive side of the p-e transaction the side of proactivity active choice and deliberate creation of rewarding environments in accordance with some research findings reported by lieberman and tobin ( ), it was possible to formulate the environmental proactivity hypothes^s^which states that as personal competence increases the environment becomes an increasingly productive source of stimulation enrichment and preference satisfying potential lawton ). in the deci and ryan terms the 5 |
| Contributors Authors | M. Powell Lawton |
| Access Rights | fair use rights |
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