Episode 35: Prosociality and Aging with guest Dr. Julia Spaniol
About Julia Spaniol
Dr. Julia Spaniol is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at Ryerson University. She holds the Canada Research Chair in Cognitive Aging and directs the Memory and Decision Processes Lab at Ryerson University. Her lab studies a variety of different topics, including cognitive functions, such as attention, memory, and decision making, in younger and older adults and how motivation influences cognitive functions across the adult lifespan.
What is Prosociality?
Prosociality is a fancy word to refer to a collection of specific thoughts and behaviours that are aimed at improving the welfare of others. Prosocial behaviour includes things that we do for others, but it also includes opinions and values that we hold that have a prosocial orientation. It’s a collection of traits, beliefs, values and behaviors that all contribute to this prosocial category (e.g., altruism, empathy, generosity, generativity - the idea of setting an example for and giving back to younger generations when you’re older, etc). Prosociality is also expressed on a broader societal level through several forms of civic engagement (e.g., volunteering, community activism, informal helping, making charitable contributions, political participation, etc.).
Why study prosocial behaviour and age?
In twenty years, every fourth Canadian is projected to be aged 65 or older. As such, there is a lot of curiosity about adult development and that encompasses changes in prosocial tendencies. When we think about aging, there is a tendency to focus on what declines as we get older; but, in the last couple of decades, there's been a noticeable shift and we are beginning to now look more closely at what improves as we get older. We want to explore the strengths and elements of resilience that older adults bring to the table. Dr. Spaniol believes that the interest in prosociality and aging really fits into this narrative.
Another reason to study prosociality, regardless of age group, is because - by definition – prosociality is good for society. It brings benefits for communities, for families, and for neighbours. So, as a culture, it is something that we want to foster and encourage on a broad scale.
Charities are also very interested in learning more about who donates and why they're donating
Community organizations depend on volunteers
Families need caregivers
Neighbours depend on one another
If you add up all of those contributions, prosociality is a real force for good on a broad societal scale. As such, it is important to study it and potentially find out how to enhance it.
Finally, prosociality also benefits the person who is being prosocial. Research shows that individuals feel better as a result of helping others, being engaged in their communities or simply doing good things for other people. Being prosocial has been shown to support physical health, mental health, and happiness levels. There are also some reports that prosociality benefits cognition (mental functions). For example, volunteering is a form of social engagement and social engagement is a predictor of positive cognitive health as you age.
Sub-component of Prosociality: Altruism
Altruism is the motivation to help others, even if it comes at a cost to yourself. Altruistic people are often willing to make sacrifices and those sacrifices can take different forms:
Money
Time
Social resources
Altruistic people are willing to accept those sacrifices in order to help others or to support causes that they believe in.
Altruistic motivations and how they change across the lifespan
Older adults go to the polls more frequently and more reliably than younger people
Older adults do more recycling than younger people
Older adults give more money to charity
Older adults are real forces in the community in terms of volunteering and activism
Lifespan theories of motivation state that we undergo a motivational shift as we age. When we're young, we tend to focus on acquisition. We want to acquire new information. We're interested in building new relationships. We go out into the world and explore. As we get older, the emphasis on exploration goes down a little bit and instead, we start to focus more on emotion regulation and meaning. As such, we're more likely to focus on goals that make us feel better. Of note, older adults are not just looking to feel good in the moment; they seek a sustained sense of meaning and contribution to the greater good.
Dr. Spaniol believes that it may be more complex than this in reality.
Some forms of altruism can be very costly. So, this notion of sacrifice that often goes along with doing good things for other people implies that you have something to give. For example, think of the time and physical health that is required to volunteer in your community or the money that it takes to contribute to charitable causes. Dr. Spaniol has a hunch that if we followed individuals over time and tracked their altruistic behaviour over time - as they grew older - we would see it peaking somewhere in the post-retirement years. But, we might ultimately see a decline again in what we refer to as "old-old" age. At this later point in the lifespan, people may be more likely to experience health problems and declines in other resources (e.g., cognitive, social or financial). Old-old adults may be limited in their ability to express altruism due to a lack of resources.
Motivation alone is not enough.
Sub-component of Prosociality: Empathy
There are essentially two components of empathy. There is an emotional component, which is the one that allows you to share somebody else's emotional experience and to have sympathy with them. There is also cognitive empathy, which is the part that involves perspective-taking. Cognitive empathy requires mental acrobatics to imagine what it's like to be that other person (suppressing for a moment what it's like to be yourself). It involved switching your perspective, which is quite different from the emotional piece.
Empathy across the lifespan
Concering aging, we know that the emotional piece appears to be relatively intact in older people. Some studies suggest that older people might even be more astute at empathizing with others on an emotional level. For example, in research, older adults will mimic the facial expressions of others that are experiencing joy or pain to a greater extent than younger adults. However, there is some indication that cognitive empathy may decline with age. Of note, the results are not clear cut, because cognitive empathy and perspective-taking can be studied in several different ways (e.g., self-report, behavioural tests in the laboratory, naturalistic observation, etc). Overall, the evidence currently suggests that cognitive empathy and perspective switching may be more challenging for some older adult because it requires so much mental agility.
Sub-components of Prosociality: Agreeableness, Cooperation, and Trust
Agreeableness is a personality trait that is associated with psychological maturity, being warm, friendly, etc. It is a component of prosociality because it means you're being nice to other people. You're an approachable person.
Cooperation and trust are the other two concepts, and these go hand-in-hand. Trust, of course, is the belief that the other humans see you as truthful and reliable. The research on aging and trust shows that older adults are more trusting than younger adults. But, when researchers look at older adults’ ability to distinguish a trustworthy face from a less trustworthy face, the evidence suggests a bit of decline in that sensitivity in older adults, as compared to younger adults.
Dr. Spaniol’s Research on Prosociality
Dr. Spaniol and her team have brought altruism into the lab. Their research reliably demonstrates that older adults are more altruistic in the sense that they are willing to part with a financial endowment (given to them at the start of the study) more easily than younger adults. Older adults were also shown to be more patient about making charitable contributions, and thus end up contributing more.
In her lab, Dr. Spaniol has also looked at the impact of stress on altruism and prosociality in younger and older adults. Interestingly, they found that when younger adults are highly stressed, they're more likely to be generous. In other words, younger adults become more altruistic when they're acutely stressed. This observation may be so they can regulate their own emotions, make themselves feel better, or overcome any negative feeling of being stressed and worried. In contrast, older adults are equally altruistic and generous regardless of their stress level.
In terms of next steps, Dr. Spaniol and her lab are interested in looking more closely at what happens in the brain when people make altruistic decisions. Specifically, they have an ongoing study where they ask people to make financial decisions that benefit themselves versus others (e.g., charitable organization), while taking pictures of their brain.
Another study they are conducting is going to look at the relationship between cognition, altruism and aging. Dr. Spaniol and her team are hoping to start a longitudinal project where they will follow people - who have recently retired from the workforce - over time and learn more about how prosociality changes during the critical post-retirement phase.
Want to be a Research Participant?
Dr. Spaniol and her team are always looking for research participants. Their Ryerson Senior Participant Pool is a database of community-dwelling adults aged 60 and older who are interested in participating in research studies at Ryerson University in Toronto, Ontario (Canada). Once your name and information are in the database, you are under no obligation to participate in any particular study. You are simply agreeing to be contacted and invited to participate in a research study, which you can accept or decline at your discretion. To learn more about the Ryerson Senior Participant Pool, you can visit Dr. Spaniol’s lab by clicking here, fill out the contact form, and someone will be in touch with your shortly to get you enrolled in the database.
Conclusion
To learn more about the work that Dr. Julia Spaniol is doing on prosociality and how it changes across the lifespan, you can visit her lab website by clicking here. If you are interested in participating in research studies that are taking place at Ryerson University, you can contact Julia’s lab about getting enrolled in the research participant pool by clicking here.