Psychological Study: You can teach an old dog new tricks

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Younger and older adults alike are able to adopt new socio-emotional behaviors. Even older adults benefit from a personality intervention aimed at handling stress and challenging social situations better. This is the conclusion of a psychological aging research study conducted by researchers from Germany and Switzerland led by Prof. Dr Cornelia Wrzus (Heidelberg University) and Prof. Dr Corina Aguilar-Raab (University of Mannheim).

Participants in the current study attended weekly training sessions and completed assignments for everyday life on how to better handle stress and deal with challenging social situations. 165 subjects – young adults mainly in their twenties and older adults between 60 and 80 – took part in the eight-week in-person training course. The researchers from Heidelberg, Mannheim, Hamburg, and Zurich (Switzerland) used a multi-method approach to examine the effects of the intervention program. Before, during, and after the training and for up to a year after the program ended, the effects of the intervention on emotional stability and extraversion were measured based on questionnaires and an indirect computer-based test.

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