In our society, chronological age is a factor that is used to determine the mental functioning and health of older adults. Aging is viewed as a category but also as the steps that are experienced in the adulthood life span (Schaie & Willis, 2011). Unfortunately, by using age as a category we, as a society, have placed older adults into categories and played on stereotypes. Through the work of Paul Baltes, studying older adults has become more complex and integrates biological, psychological, and sociological aspects to form a comprehensive picture.
To look at the lifespan of an older adult, Baltes aided his colleagues in developing lifespan models that are used today. Three influences on lifespan are age-graded influences, history-graded influences, and non-normative influences (Baltes, 2000). According to Cavanaugh and Blanchard-Fields (2015) non-normative influence is a random experience that happens to one person and is important, i.e. winning the lottery or losing a job. A normative age-graded influence is an experience that happens to one cohort and is a result of biopsychosocial and cultural forces (Cavanaugh & Blanchard-Fields, 2015). A history-graded influence is one that those in one culture experience together such as the Great Depression. Through these aspects of the lifespan model Baltes has created other lenses to see older adults in when looking at their life and how they have developed.
Baltes continued to expand on the lifespan model and develop gerontology as its own discipline, through his research and collaboration with colleagues from varying disciplines. He believed that Schaie’s approach to recognize the effects of age through older effects such as environment and genetics instead of examining them as one: “genetic-environmental interaction” (Baltes, 2000, p. 8) needed to be changed to encompass interactions between varying disciplines. This change in mindset allowed him to develop cross-sectional and longitudinal sequence labels to better study and research aging (Baltes, 2000).
While teaching at West Virginia University, Baltes began the creation of lifespan psychology that bridged together development and aging methods (Baltes, 2000). Adding to his creation of lifespan psychology, Baltes collaborated with his wife, Margret, to strengthen his focus on modifying and optimizing human development and aging which helped in recognizing that “developmental outcome[s]are…conditioned by environmental factors and their constraints” (Baltes, 2000, p.11). Continuing his collaboration with colleagues, Baltes worked with John Nesselroade at Penn State University along with Richard Lerner and Graham Spanier, who were knowledgeable about sociology, in his further creation and enactment of lifespan theory (Baltes, 2000). In Germany, he worked with Karl Mayer, coleader of the Berlin Aging Study, who was interested in fortifying the life course in the sociological framework (Baltes, 2000).
Aging is studied through two choices. The first is to study aging by looking at chronological age and the second choice is to look at aging in conjunction with how we go through life (Baltes, 2000). As the field of gerontology continued to grow, its view shifted to a new perspective that examined the thought that from the day we are born until we die, we experience ups and downs which varies from previous theories where early and later life are major characteristics of our changes throughout life (Baltes, 2000). Baltes (2000) realized from his collaborations that to study aging it was greater than the just looking at psychology, but will become more succinct if biological, social, historical, and institutional influences are examined closely. To study aging is to look at more than just physical features and recording an older adults’ deterioration (Baltes, 2000).
While reading Baltes autobiography, I realized the extent to which personal experiences shape our future endeavors. Baltes did not let his disadvantaged childhood or Mr. Boesch rejecting his first dissertation idea stop him from succeeding in the discovery of new ways to study aging. This way of thinking will aid me in continuing in graduate school and my pursuit of a career even when it becomes difficult. I will keep in mind what I want to attain in life and remember the goals I have set for myself. If Baltes let his childhood and his rejection from Mr. Boesch keep him from succeeding we would not have the interdisciplinary nature of gerontology that we do now. Because of his research methods it will enable me to study aging more effectively by looking at the interaction between biopsychosocial aspects and not rely on physical characteristics. The selective optimization with compensation will assist me in my future career by allowing me the ability to aid older adults in obtaining and reaching goals and counteract declines they may face.