Friday, February 04, 2011

Do elders lose their social skills, or just have fewer to start with?

A recent study suggested that elders have more trouble identifying social gaffes than younger people do.

What I'm wondering: does this mean elders lose the ability to identify socially inappropriate behaviour, or does this mean they had lower standards of socially inappropriate behaviour to start with?

The article suggests that the scientists think they are losing their ability, but I don't see anything in the experiment (at least not as described in the article) to rule out the possibility that they never had it in the first place.

This brought to mind a conversation I once had with my grandmother. She told me that if I go out to a bar with friends, I should always order vodka and water. That way, when I've had enough to drink and my friends are trying to get me to drink more, I can quietly ask the bartender to fill mine up with just water, so my friends won't know that difference. All of which raises the question: in what world do your friends try to make you drink more when you've had enough, to the extent that you have to trick them into thinking you're drinking???

Obviously this isn't enough of a basis to draw actual conclusions, but it does occur to me that people who think it's absolutely routine and unremarkable for your friends to pressure you into drinking more than you feel you can handle might never have had sufficiently high standards of socially appropriate behaviour.

5 comments:

laura k said...

If it was a good study, it would have looked at enough people so you could assume average social skills.

On the other hand, my elders also used to give me the most bizarre kinds of advice, not very different from that vodka-and-water story.

But if it's generational, when did it stop or start? If or when did people start to acquire better social skills? I'm confused.

impudent strumpet said...

Now I'm curious what bizarre advice your elders gave you!

Even if we can assume average social skills, and the 30-year-olds' social skills are better on average than the 80-year-olds', does that mean that the average 80-year-old's social skills are declining? Or does that mean that 50 years ago, the average 30-year-old had worse skills than today's 30-year-olds?

As to how social skills might have improved, I know often look at certain things my elders do and think "I don't want to be like that." And I remember my parents trying to parent me away from doing things other people do that they (my parents) don't like.

As a very 21st-century thing, I've noticed in the comments sections and live chats associated with some advice columns, people often end up brainstorming solutions, looking at it from different angles, raising possible mitigating factors that others haven't thought of, etc. Because I read these things, I'm exposed to a wider range of social tools than my parents would have been. Maybe previous generations had similar things when they started printing advice columns in newspapers, or when self-help books got big.

And part of it would be just general social change. If someone introduced me to his new boyfriend last summer and to his new girlfriend this winter, I wouldn't blink. But even the elders of my acquaintance who are worldly enough not to blink at the boyfriend would likely say something stupid about the fact that now he's with a woman.

There must be more in there, but I can sort of picture how all these tiny factors might add up.

laura k said...

Because I read these things, I'm exposed to a wider range of social tools than my parents would have been.

Very good point, I hadn't thought of this at all. We are exposed to a greater diversity of people now, too - at least I am compared to my grandparents. That helps, too.

Random sampling of weird advice I got from elders:

To treat a nosebleed, take a piece of cardboard and shove it painfully underneath your upper lip, towards your nose.

Never call a boyfriend. Always wait until he calls you, no matter what the circumstances.

Boys who spend too much time with their mothers will grow up gay. (Strictly speaking, this is not advice, but it was one of the accepted modes of thought I was exposed to - and it was cautionary advice about raising children. There was no explanation of why this was said to happen, no evidence offered, and no similar causal effect for fathers and daughters.)

impudent strumpet said...

That nosebleed thing is hilarious! So your grandparents lived in a world where bits of cardboard were more readily available than kleenex or handkerchiefs?

Once upon a time I was on a subway and a teenage boy got a nosebleed, and this 40ish woman next to me gave him some kleenex and told him to pinch his nose and tilt his head back, which is wrong. (It used to be tilt your head back, but now it's tilt your head forward so the blood doesn't pool in your sinuses.) Now I'm thinking it's a good thing it wasn't one of your elders there instead!

I'm also super curious why spending time with their father wasn't thought to turn girls into lesbians. When I was a young child (under the age of 9), I was quite genuinely concerned that if I spent too much time with my father instead of my mother I'd turn into a boy. (I already suspected I was going to turn into a boy anyway due to a misunderstanding of how genetics work.) That all seems perfectly consistent with the logic that mothers turn boys gay, so I'm really wondering why it doesn't work both ways.

laura k said...

Tilt head forward?? I was taught tilt back. I suffered from chronic nosebleeds as a child (eventually cured through an incredibly painful procedure that was supposed to "sting a bit" [LIARS!!!]). Perhaps I was taught to tilt my head back so that my clothes would not be ruined.

"I'm also super curious why spending time with their father wasn't thought to turn girls into lesbians."

It's very strange, isn't it? Perhaps because fathers from that generation were in no danger of spending too much time with their children? Boys were thought to be over-feminized from too much maternal contact, because moms were home all the time, "babying" their sons. So it was said.