Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Its subject matter includes the behavior of humans and nonhumans,both conscious and unconscious phenomena,and mental processes such as thoughts,feelings,and motives. Psychology is an academic discipline of immense scope,crossing the boundaries between the natural and social sciences. Biological psychologists seek an understanding of the emergent properties of brains,linking the discipline to neuroscience. As social scientists,psychologists aim to understand the behavior of individuals and groups.
Stress,whether physiological,biological or psychological,is an organism's response to a stressor such as an environmental condition. When stressed by stimuli that alter an organism's environment,multiple systems respond across the body. In humans and most mammals,the autonomic nervous system and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis are the two major systems that respond to stress. Two well-known hormones that humans produce during stressful situations are adrenaline and cortisol.
Gerontology is the study of the social,cultural,psychological,cognitive,and biological aspects of aging. The word was coined by Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov in 1903,from the Greek γέρων (gérōn),meaning "old man",and -λογία (-logía),meaning "study of". The field is distinguished from geriatrics,which is the branch of medicine that specializes in the treatment of existing disease in older adults. Gerontologists include researchers and practitioners in the fields of biology,nursing,medicine,criminology,dentistry,social work,physical and occupational therapy,psychology,psychiatry,sociology,economics,political science,architecture,geography,pharmacy,public health,housing,and anthropology.
A midlife crisis is a transition of identity and self-confidence that can occur in middle-aged individuals,typically 45 to 64 years old. The phenomenon is described as a psychological crisis brought about by events that highlight a person's growing age,inevitable mortality,and possible lack of accomplishments in life. This may produce feelings of intense depression,remorse,and high levels of anxiety;or the desire to achieve youthfulness,make drastic changes to their current lifestyle,or change past decisions and events. Studies on midlife crises show that they are less common than popularly believed,according to Vaillant (2012):in his 75-year longitudinal study on adult development,he found midlife crises were rare experiences for people involved in the study. The term was coined by Elliott Jaques in 1965.
Middle age, or middle adulthood, is the age range of the years halfway between childhood and old age. The exact range is subject to academic debate,but the term is commonly used to denote the age range from around 45 to around 65 years. Many changes may occur between young adulthood and this stage. This phase of life is marked by gradual physical,cognitive,and social decline in individuals as they age.
Health psychology is the study of psychological and behavioral processes in health,illness,and healthcare. The discipline is concerned with understanding how psychological,behavioral,and cultural factors contribute to physical health and illness. Psychological factors can affect health directly. For example,chronically occurring environmental stressors affecting the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis,cumulatively,can harm health. Behavioral factors can also affect a person's health. For example,certain behaviors can,over time,harm or enhance health. Health psychologists take a biopsychosocial approach. In other words,health psychologists understand health to be the product not only of biological processes but also of psychological,behavioral,and social processes.
Stereotype threat is a situational predicament in which people are or feel themselves to be at risk of conforming to stereotypes about their social group. It is theorized to be a contributing factor to long-standing racial and gender gaps in academic performance. Since its introduction into the academic literature,stereotype threat has become one of the most widely studied topics in the field of social psychology.
Adult development encompasses the changes that occur in biological and psychological domains of human life from the end of adolescence until the end of one's life. Changes occur at the cellular level and are partially explained by biological theories of adult development and aging. Biological changes influence psychological and interpersonal/social developmental changes,which are often described by stage theories of human development. Stage theories typically focus on "age-appropriate" developmental tasks to be achieved at each stage. Erik Erikson and Carl Jung proposed stage theories of human development that encompass the entire life span,and emphasized the potential for positive change very late in life.
Mara Mather is a professor of gerontology and psychology at the USC Davis School of Gerontology. Her research deals with aging and affective neuroscience,focusing on how emotion and stress affect memory and decisions. She is the daughter of mathematician John N. Mather.
Nelson Cowan is the Curators' Distinguished Professor of Psychological Sciences at the University of Missouri. He specializes in working memory,the small amount of information held in mind and used for language processing and various kinds of problem solving. To overcome conceptual difficulties that arise for models of information processing in which different functions occur in separate boxes,Cowan proposed a more organically organized "embedded processes" model. Within it,representations held in working memory comprise an activated subset of the representations held in long-term memory,with a smaller subset held in a more integrated form in the current focus of attention. Other work has been on the developmental growth of working memory capacity and the scientific method. His work,funded by the National Institutes of Health since 1984,has been cited over 41,000 times according to Google Scholar. The work has resulted in over 250 peer-reviewed articles,over 60 book chapters,2 sole-authored books,and 4 edited volumes.
Becca R. Levy is a professor of Epidemiology at Yale School of Public Health and Professor of Psychology at Yale University. She is a leading researcher in the fields of social gerontology and psychology of aging. She is credited with creating the field of how age stereotypes,which are assimilated from the culture,impact the health of older individuals. The Dean of Columbia School of Public Health describes Levy as "a pioneer" in the "growing body of impressive research showing that our attitudes toward aging affect our health,our resilience in the face of adversity,and our very survival."
Attentional control,colloquially referred to as concentration,refers to an individual's capacity to choose what they pay attention to and what they ignore. It is also known as endogenous attention or executive attention. In lay terms,attentional control can be described as an individual's ability to concentrate. Primarily mediated by the frontal areas of the brain including the anterior cingulate cortex,attentional control and attentional shifting are thought to be closely related to other executive functions such as working memory.
The Institute of Gerontology (IOG) at Wayne State University conducts research on the behavioral and social aspects of aging. Located in Detroit,Michigan,the Institute has a strong focus on urban issues,especially disability,mobility and transportation,financial challenges,and disparities in health between ethnic groups. Faculty at the Institute are jointly appointed with a home department in a complementary discipline,such as economics,physical therapy or nursing. The Institute also maintains a Lifespan Cognitive Neuroscience of Aging laboratory currently profiling brain changes in normal aging through traditional testing and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of participants brain structure and function.
Kenneth Dodge is the William McDougall Distinguished Professor of Public Policy and Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University. He is also the founding and past director of the Duke University Center for Child and Family Policy and founder of Family Connects International.
Jiska Cohen-Mansfield is the Igor Orenstein Chair for the Study of Geriatrics at Tel Aviv University Medical School and a professor at the Department of Health Promotion at the School of Public Health in the Sackler Medical Faculty at Tel Aviv University. She is the director of the Minerva Center for Interdisciplinary Study of End of Life at Tel-Aviv University.
Jutta Heckhausen is Professor of Psychological Science,University of California,Irvine. She specializes in life-span developmental psychology,motivation,individual agency and social context. She expanded her education at the Center for Social and Behavioral Science,Stanford University and at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research,University Bielefeld,Germany. At the Department of Psychological Science at University of California,Irvine,she teaches in the areas of life-span development and motivational psychology.
The shift-and-persist model has emerged in order to account for unintuitive,positive health outcomes in some individuals of low socioeconomic status. A large body of research has previously linked low socioeconomic status to poor physical and mental health outcomes,including early mortality. Low socioeconomic status is hypothesized to get "under the skin" by producing chronic activation of the sympathetic nervous system and hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis,which increases allostatic load,leading to the pathogenesis of chronic disease. However,some individuals of low socioeconomic status do not appear to experience the expected,negative health effects associated with growing up in poverty. To account for this,the shift-and-persist model proposes that,as children,some individuals of low socioeconomic status learn adaptive strategies for regulating their emotions ("shifting") and focusing on their goals ("persisting") in the face of chronic adversity. According to this model,the use of shift-and-persist strategies diminishes the typical negative effects of adversity on health by leading to more adaptive biological,cognitive,and behavioral responses to daily stressors.
Ruchika Shaurya Prakash is an American psychologist who is a professor at Ohio State University. She is Director of the Center for Cognitive and Behavioral Brain Imaging. Prakash was awarded the American Psychological Association Early Career Achievement Award in 2016. She delivered online webinars on resilience and mindfulness throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
Susan Krauss Whitbourne is a developmental clinical psychologist known for her work on personality and identity over the lifespan. She holds the position of professor emerita of psychology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
