Social cognitions involve thoughts about others and thoughts about the self in relationship to others. When we consider cognitive aging theory from this point of view, it leads us away from traditional research methods and theoretical perspectives that have focused on basic information processing and how it is tied to physiological decline. This body of research has been largely experimental and often has taken place in situations designed to remove the effects of the social context. In contrast, research on social cognition and aging typically is designed to consider how social context affects the thinking of adults.
Work on social cognition has raised important issues inherent in understanding what it means to grow old as a social being. Our life stories, experiences, social competence, core values, and general understanding of the social world have a profound effect on our development at any age. To address these issues, we must consider both basic cognitive processes and abilities in the aging adult as well as everyday cognitive functioning in a social context. Cognitive capacity and speed of processing do show losses in old age. Nevertheless, the vast majority of older adults are skilled and effective in their interactions with their social environment. The basic goal of the social cognitive approach is to understand how people make sense of themselves, others, and events in everyday life. This article examines our current understanding of these processes by looking at five different areas of social cognitive research: person perception and stereotypes, socio-emotional selectivity, collaborative cognition, morality, and positive psychology.
Much of the research literature on basic cognition in later life points to possible losses over a wide variety of domains such as memory, communication, and decision making. This body of work has focused on information-processing abilities and capacity and has typically been carried out in an environment designed to minimize the effects of the social context. Age differences demonstrated in these traditional experimental studies usually have been interpreted with reference to inevitable biological decline. A social cognitive perspective, on the other hand, leads us to consider how, and how well, older adults function in their social worlds. Following from the pioneering work of Vygotsky on child development, researchers interested in social cognition in later life assume that development is rooted in social processes across the life span. Cognitive losses may be likely as one ages, but there are also gains, and they are both significantly affected by the social context.
This article reviewed the most influential findings in the study of social cognition in later life. In general, researchers have been interested in the kinds of social environments that older people manage or construct for themselves. They have considered what effect declines in cognitive capacity might have on the social thinking and behaviors of older adults. The areas of research from which these findings are drawn target basic social processes: how older people perceive and evaluate other social actors and are evaluated in return; how the perception of one’s life and time left in that life affect motivational goals; how social resources can be used to compensate for declining or inadequate cognitive resources; how older adults judge the characteristics and actions of others in arriving at a decision about action; and how well-being can be linked to styles of thought, social appraisal, and perceptions of events. Taken together, a growing body of research on social cognition in later life paints a complex portrait of the average older person as intentional and well-functioning in his or her everyday social world despite the undoubted challenges provided by shrinking social networks and reduced cognitive resources in later life.
