From chump to champ: people's appraisals of their earlier and present selves

Power decline and the change of self-esteem: The moderating effect of self-defense

Introduction

Power is a fundamental force in social relationships. Having more power means more freedom and resources and the ability to control and influence others. Psychologically, people are afraid of power decline, therefore are motivated towards self-enhancement to avoid the decline of self-esteem. We asked if power decline brings about a subsequent decline in self-esteem.

Objective

To investigate whether power decline in social relationships leads to a decline in self-esteem and to explore the moderating role of self-defense.

Methods

A laboratory experiment was conducted with college students in East China as subjects, which was divided into manipulation tests of power decline and Self-Defense (N = 61) and two formal experiments (N = 65; N = 160). In addition, a semi-structured in-depth interview was used to further improve the ecological validity of the findings.

Results

(1) Power decline did not lead to a decline of self-esteem, and self-esteem rises when power remained unchanged; (2) When the level of self-defense was higher, constant power lead to a greater increase of self-esteem, and the decline of power would not lead to the change of self-esteem; (3) When the level of self-defense was lower, the relationship between constant power and the rise of self-esteem was weakened, and power decline would not lead to the significant change of self-esteem. At the end of this study, the theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Numerical Feedback Roundness Affects the Choice of the Self vs. Others as a Reference Point

People can use social or personal information as a reference point against which they compare their performance. While previous research has shown that reference point choice can be affected by individual characteristics, situational factors, and goals, we suggest that properties of the performance feedback itself can also play a role in this choice. We focus on the effects of round vs. precise numerical feedback on reference point preferences. In three studies, we show that people are more likely to use themselves as a reference point to evaluate their performance following a feedback in the form of a round score (e.g., a score of 70 in a task) and to use others as a reference point following a precise score (e.g., a score of 71). Study 1 shows decreased interest in comparisons with others following round rather than precise feedback. Study 2 shows that round (vs. precise) feedback also increases actual choice of the self (vs. others) as a reference point. Study 3 demonstrates that the effect of the numerical feedback on reference point preferences extends to the choice of a benchmark for future comparisons. We discuss the implications of our results for the literature and practice, including how this can be used to encourage desirable behaviors.

Temporal self-compression: Behavioral and neural evidence that past and future selves are compressed as they move away from the present

For centuries, great thinkers have struggled to understand how people represent a personal identity that changes over time. Insight may come from a basic principle of perception: as objects become distant, they also become less discriminable or “compressed.” In Studies 1–3, we demonstrate that people’s ratings of their own personality become increasingly less differentiated as they consider more distant past and future selves. In Study 4, we found neural evidence that the brain compresses self-representations with time as well. When we peer out a window, objects close to us are in clear view, whereas distant objects are hard to tell apart. We provide evidence that self-perception may operate similarly, with the nuance of distant selves increasingly harder to perceive.

A basic principle of perception is that as objects increase in distance from an observer, they also become logarithmically compressed in perception (i.e., not differentiated from one another), making them hard to distinguish. Could this basic principle apply to perhaps our most meaningful mental representation: our own sense of self? Here, we report four studies that suggest selves are increasingly non-discriminable with temporal distance from the present as well. In Studies 1 through 3, participants made trait ratings across various time points in the past and future. We found that participants compressed their past and future selves, relative to their present self. This effect was preferential to the self and could not be explained by the alternative possibility that individuals simply perceive arbitrary self-change with time irrespective of temporal distance. In Study 4, we tested for neural evidence of temporal self-compression by having participants complete trait ratings across time points while undergoing functional MRI. Representational similarity analysis was used to determine whether neural self-representations are compressed with temporal distance as well. We found evidence of temporal self-compression in areas of the default network, including medial prefrontal cortex and posterior cingulate cortex. Specifically, neural pattern similarity between self-representations was logarithmically compressed with temporal distance. Taken together, these findings reveal a “temporal self-compression” effect, with temporal selves becoming increasingly non-discriminable with distance from the present.

A Difference of Past Self-Evaluation Between College Students With Low and High Socioeconomic Status: Evidence From Event-Related Potentials

Socioeconomic status (SES) refers to the social position or class according to their material and non-material social resources. We conducted a study with 60 college students to explore whether SES affects past self-evaluation and used event-related potentials (ERPs) in a self-reference task that required participants to judge whether the trait adjectives (positive or negative) describing themselves 5 years ago were appropriate for them. Behavioral data showed that individuals’ positive past self-evaluations were significantly higher than individuals’ negative past self-evaluations, regardless of high or low SES. Individuals with high SES had significantly higher positive past self-evaluations than those with low SES. ERP data showed that in the low SES group, negative adjectives elicited a marginally greater N400 amplitude than positive adjectives; in the high SES group, negative adjectives elicited a greater late positive potential (LPP) amplitude than positive adjectives. N400 is an index of the accessibility of semantic processing, and a larger N400 amplitude reflects less fluent semantic processing. LPP is an index of continuous attention during late processing; the larger LPP amplitude is elicited, the more attention resources are invested. Our results indicated that compared with college students with low SES, the past self-evaluations of college students with high SES were more positive; college students with high SES paid more attention to negative adjectives. However, college students with low SES were marginally less fluent in processing negative adjectives.

Neither an Optimist Nor a Pessimist Be: Mistaken Expectations Lower Well-Being

This article speaks to the classic view that mental health requires accurate self-perception. Using a representative British sample (N = 1,601) it finds that, as measured by two established well-being indicators, those with mistaken expectations, whether optimistic or pessimistic, do worse than realists. We index unrealistic optimism as the difference between financial expectations and financial realizations measured annually over 18 years. The effects are not small, with those holding the most pessimistic (optimistic) expectations experiencing a 21.8% (13.5%) reduction in long-run well-being. These findings may result from the decision errors and counteracting emotions associated with holding biased beliefs. For optimists, disappointment may eventually dominate the anticipatory feelings of expecting the best while for pessimists the depressing effect of expecting doom may eventually dominate the elation when the worst is avoided. Also, plans based on inaccurate beliefs are bound to deliver worse outcomes than would rational expectations.

Temporal and social comparative self-assessments of physical health in young, middle-aged, and young-old adults in the MIDUS study

This study examined temporal and social comparisons of physical health status. Participants in two waves of the MIDUS cohort ranging in age from young adult to young-old (N = 2,408) rated current, past, and future physical health, as well as peer health. Past health was generally rated as better than current health (particularly among young adults). Young adults expected better future health; young-old adults expected declining health. All groups recalled their health as better than they reported a decade earlier. Middle-aged and young-old respondents expected more decline than they reported ten years later; young adults' ratings were consistent. The two older groups believed they were healthier than same-age peers, whereas younger respondents believed they were less healthy (though as healthy as the other age groups). The nature and trajectories of temporal and social comparisons of physical health across the lifespan suggest the need to examine their consequences for health behaviors.

Perceptions of values over time and why they matter

Objective

Extant research mostly treats values as being stable over time. Our research examined how people perceive values over time and whether or not these perceptions reflect motivational tensions between theoretically opposing values. We also assessed the viability of examining values over time to predict well‐being and future intentions.

Method

Four studies (N = 934) asked participants to report their values across past, present, and future settings. These temporal trajectories were analyzed across the four types of higher‐order values: self‐transcendence, self‐enhancement, openness, and conservation. Studies 3 and 4 assessed associations with well‐being. Study 4 assessed associations with self‐reported behavior over time.

Results

Across all four studies, participants perceived their values as being dynamic over time. Younger participants' trajectories did not reflect the motivational conflicts typically reported in values research, but Study 4 showed potential awareness in older age groups. Variability in temporal values correlated with well‐being, particularly for openness values. Future values predicted future intentions, even when controlling for present values.

Conclusion

This novel method of examining values provides new understanding into how people perceive the pursuit of values over time. Additionally, we show two ways that a temporal values measure can offer new insights into well‐being and future intentions.

From Happiness Orientations to Work Performance: The Mediating Role of Hedonic and Eudaimonic Experiences

In organizations, psychologists have often tried to promote employees' well-being and performance, and this can be achieved through different pathways. The happy-productive worker thesis states that 'happy' workers perform better than 'unhappy' ones. However, most studies have focused on hedonic well-being at the expense of the person's eudaimonic experience. This study examines whether orientations to happiness (i.e., life of pleasure/meaning) are related to hedonic (i.e., perception of comfort) and eudaimonic (i.e., activity worthwhileness) experiences that, in turn, improve performance. We applied multilevel structural equation modeling to diary data (68 office workers; n = 471 timepoints). We obtained significant effects of: life of pleasure on self-rated performance through activity worthwhileness, life of meaning on performance (self-rated, rated by the supervisor) through activity worthwhileness, and life of meaning on performance rated by the supervisor through perception of comfort. Results show more significant paths from/or through eudaimonia to performance than from/or through hedonia. The results suggest that the pursuit and/or experience of eudaimonic happiness is more beneficial for work performance than the pursuit and/or experience of hedonic happiness. Theoretical and practical implications for organizations are discussed.

Self-narrative focus in autobiographical events: The effect of time, emotion, and individual differences

Individuals may take a self-narrative focus on the meaning of personal events in their life story, rather than viewing the events in isolation. Using the Centrality of Event Scale (CES; Berntsen & Rubin in Behaviour Research and Therapy, 44, 219-231, 2006) as our measure, we investigated self-narrative focus as an individual differences variable in addition to its established role as a measure of individual events. Three studies, with 169, 182, and 190 participants had 11, 10, and 11 different events varied across the dimensions of remembered past versus imagined future, distance from the present, and valence. Imagined future events, events more distant from the present, and positive events all had increased self-narrative focus, in agreement with published theories and findings. Nonetheless, CES ratings for individual events correlated positively with each other within individuals (r ~ .30) and supported a single factor solution. These results are consistent with a stable individual differences tendency toward self-narrative focus that transcends single events. Thus, self-narrative focus is both a response whereby people relate individual events to their life story and identity and an individual differences variable that is stable over a range of events. The findings are discussed in relation to narrative measures of autobiographical reasoning.

Cultural Asymmetry Between Perceptions of Past and Future Personal Change

Research has shown that Westerners expect less change to occur in the future than they recall having occurred in the past. The present research investigated how recalled change and anticipated change may vary across cultures. Because Chinese perceive past times as being closer to the present than do Westerners, and people believe things tend to change more over a long period of time than over a short period of time, Chinese may perceive smaller changes from the past to the present than do Westerners. Consequently, the asymmetry between recalled change and anticipated change would disappear for Chinese. Four empirical studies revealed that for British participants, recalled changes in the past for personality, values, and the person as a whole were greater than anticipated changes in the future, whereas for Chinese, recalled changes in the past were similar in magnitude as anticipated changes in the future. Studies 2b and 3 further revealed that subjective temporal distance accounted for the cross-cultural differences in the asymmetry between recalled and anticipated changes.

Reconsidering self-deprecation as a communication practice

‘Self‐deprecation’ (SD) is widely understood within social psychology and popular culture as a form of self‐talk that reflects a cognitive state, such as low self‐esteem or negative self‐regard. However, most research on SD suffers theoretical and methodological problems that fail to account for how its cognitive and linguistic aspects can be reconciled. We know little about SD as it occurs in interactional settings. Utilizing a conversation analytic (CA) perspective that brackets cognitive explanations for linguistic phenomena, this paper draws on more than 100 hours of transcribed recordings of interactions from diverse settings to systematically examine the form and function of a common class of SD: critical comments by a speaker on their current talk or actions (self‐deprecatory meta‐comments; SDMCs). Analyses demonstrate that SDMCs are used in environments of possible or actual interactional trouble, and manage this trouble in different sequential positions. The paper shows that SDs can be treated as a communication practice. Rigorous analysis of SDMCs can enrich understanding of the construction of ‘identities’ in talk. It advances a CA understanding of the ascription of social actions, and the preference for self‐criticism over criticism by others. Findings suggest that widespread advice to self‐deprecate less may be invalid.

My future is brighter than yours: the positivity bias in episodic future thinking and future self-images

Numerous studies on episodic future thinking have demonstrated that individuals perceive their future as more positive and idyllic than their past. It has been suggested that this positivity bias might serve a self-enhancement function. Yet, conflicting findings and lack of systematic studies on the generalizability of the phenomenon leave this interpretation uncertain. We provide the first systematic examination of the positivity bias across different domains and tasks of future thinking. First, we use the same tasks in two different domains of future thinking, representing an episodic (events) and a semantic dimension (self-images), respectively. Second, we use two different measures of positivity bias (i.e., frequency of positive versus negative instances and their distance from present). Third, we contrast each measure in each domain for events/self-images related to self versus an acquaintance. Experiments 1 and 2 showed a strong, general tendency for the generation of positive future events/self-images, but most pronounced for self, relative to an acquaintance. Experiments 3 and 4 demonstrated that positive future events/self-images were dated closer to present, whereas negative ones were pushed further into the future, but only for self and not for an acquaintance. Our results support the idea that the positivity bias in future thinking serves a self-enhancement function and that this bias likely represents a similar underlying motivational mechanism across different domains of future thinking, whether episodic or semantic. The findings add to our understanding of the motivational functions served by different forms of future thoughts in relation to the self.

Daily eudaimonic well-being as a predictor of daily performance: A dynamic lens

Sustaining employees' well-being and high performance at work is a challenge for organizations in today's highly competitive environment. This study examines the dynamic reciprocal relationship between the variability in office workers' eudaimonic well-being (i.e., activity worthwhileness) and their extra-role performance. Eighty-three white-collar employees filled in a diary questionnaire twice a day, once in the morning and once in the afternoon, on four consecutive working days. The results show that eudaimonic well-being displays clear variability in a short time frame. In addition, Bayesian Multilevel Structural Equation Models (MSEMs) reveal a significant positive relationship between the levels of state eudaimonic well-being in the afternoon and the increase in the levels of state extra-role performance from that afternoon to the next morning. Moreover, the overall levels of self-reported state eudaimonic well-being across the diary measurements are significantly and positively related to the overall levels of extra-role performance assessed by the supervisor during the diary measurement. Finally, there is a significant negative relationship between the amount of intra-individual variability in state eudaimonic well-being during the week and the overall levels of self-rated state extra-role performance during the same week. These findings shed light on the dynamic nature of both the eudaimonic component of well-being and performance, highlighting the importance of eudaimonic well-being for extra-role performance and expanding the happy-productive worker thesis. The results suggest that the daily eudaimonic experience of meaning at work should complement the experience of hedonic well-being because it is an important factor in achieving better and more sustainable employee performance on a daily basis.

Perceived changes in life satisfaction from the past, present and to the future: A comparison of U.S. and Japan

The current study examined how perceptions of change in life satisfaction vary by age and culture. Perceptions of past, present, and future life satisfaction were examined in adults aged 33-79 from the Midlife in the United States Study (N = 4,803) and from the Survey of Midlife in Japan (N = 974). Both cultures exhibited the same age-related pattern of change in perceptions of life satisfaction. Younger adults perceived improvement in life satisfaction from the past to present and from present to the future. The perceived improvement was more modest among middle-aged adults and then shifted to a decline among older adults. Despite the same curvilinear pattern in both cultures, the perceived improvement was not as positive, and the shift toward expecting declines occurred at an earlier age among Japanese adults compared to U.S. adults. Findings support existing theories of life span development but suggest that cultural context may influence both the positive outlook and the timing of these processes across adulthood. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

"I've grown so much": Temporal self-appraisals across the college experience

How accurate are retrospective self-views? Though elevated views of the self are ubiquitous, there may be a notable exception: the past self. A diminished past self implies growth and development of the present self. One class of college students was followed across four years. Students rated their personal growth, purpose in life, self-esteem, and life satisfaction at the beginning of their college career and halfway through their college career. Just prior to graduation, they retrospectively rated themselves at those two time points. Compared to their actual assessments, retrospective assessments recalled less personal growth, less life purpose, lower self-esteem (but higher life satisfaction). Thus, the past self was reduced and college careers were falsely recalled as involving greater growth and development.

Decoupling Office Energy Efficiency From Employees' Well-Being and Performance: A Systematic Review

Energy efficiency (i.e., the ratio of output of performance to input of energy) in office buildings can reduce energy costs and CO₂ emissions, but there are barriers to widespread adoption of energy efficient solutions in offices because they are often perceived as a potential threat to perceived comfort, well-being, and performance of office users. However, the links between offices' energy efficiency and users' performance and well-being through their moderators are neither necessary nor empirically confirmed. The purpose of this study is to carry out a systematic review to identify the existing empirical evidence regarding the relationships between energy-efficient solutions in sustainable office buildings and the perceptions of employees' productivity and well-being. Additionally, we aim to identify relevant boundary conditions for these relationships to occur. A systematic literature search of online databases for energy efficiency literature (e.g., Environment Complete, GreenFILE), employee literature (e.g., PsycINFO, Business Source Complete) and general social science literature (e.g., Academic Search Complete) yielded 34 empirical studies. Also, inclusion and exclusion criteria were set. The results suggest that it is possible to decouple energy costs from organizational outcomes such as employee well-being and performance. Also, they indicate the existence of moderators and mediators in the relationship between green office building solutions and well-being/performance. Directions for future research and the implications for practice considering different stakeholders interested in implementing green building solutions, adopting energy-saving measures in offices, and improving employees' functioning are suggested.

Perceptions of Change after a Trauma and Perceived Posttraumatic Growth: A Prospective Examination

Recent research has distinguished between actual posttraumatic growth (PTG) and perceived PTG. We used a prospective research design to measure both actual and perceived PTG in an attempt to replicate and extend previous findings. We examined college students (N = 64) who experienced a traumatic event between the start (Time 1) and end (Time 2) of a semester. We included three measures of change from pre- to post-trauma: (1) Actual PTG (change scores in measures of PTG domains), (2) perceived general growth (Time 2 ratings of functioning at Time 1 subtracted from actual ratings given at Time 1), and (3) perceived PTG (self-reports of PTG on the posttraumatic growth inventory). The results revealed perceived general growth and actual PTG were significantly correlated, suggesting that participants' perceptions of change were accurate. However, perceived PTG was not significantly related to either actual PTG or perceived general growth. Further, increases in actual PTG and perceived general growth were significantly related to decreases in distress and unrelated to coping. By contrast, higher levels of perceived PTG were significantly related to increases in distress and higher levels of avoidance coping. Our results suggest perceived PTG may be more of a coping process than an accurate recall of posttraumatic change.

Implicit Attitudes toward the Self Over Time in Chinese Undergraduates

Although the explicit attitudes of Chinese people toward the self over time are known (i.e., past = present < future), little is known about their implicit attitudes. Two studies were conducted to measure the implicit subjective temporal trajectory (STT) of Chinese undergraduates. Study 1 used a Go/No-go association task to measure participants’ implicit attitudes toward their past, present, and future selves. The obtained implicit STT was different from the explicit pattern found in former research. It showed that the future self was viewed to be identical to the present self and participants implicitly evaluated their present self as better than the past self. Since this comparison of the past and present selves suggested a cultural difference, we aimed to replicate this finding in Study 2. Using an implicit association test, we again found that the present self was more easily associated with positive valence than the past self. Overall, both studies reveal an implicitly inclining-flat STT (i.e., past < present = future) for Chinese undergraduates. Implications of this difference in explicit-implicit measures and the cultural differences of temporal self appraisals are discussed.

Beyond cause to consequence: The road from possible to core self-revision

Two studies addressed the ultimate consequences and pathways running from repeated possible self-revisions to gradual revisions in core selves over time. As hypothesized, greater prior experiences of downward possible self-revision ultimately predicted greater subsequent declines in core self-integrity (e.g., greater self-doubt, lower self-esteem). However, also as hypothesized, this effect was mediated by the relative use of defensive vs. remedial attributions for past downward self-revision experiences. In closing, we unpack how the present work extends prior work by situating possible selves and motivated self-attributions as complementary systems that can slowly undermine as well as expand the integrity of core selves over time.

Neural correlates of self-appraisals in the near and distant future: an event-related potential study

To investigate perceptual and neural correlates of future self-appraisals as a function of temporal distance, event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants (11 women, eight men) made judgments about the applicability of trait adjectives to their near future selves (i.e., one month from now) and their distant future selves (i.e., three years from now). Behavioral results indicated people used fewer positive adjectives, more negative adjectives, recalled more specific events coming to mind and felt more psychologically connected to the near future self than the distant future self. Electrophysiological results demonstrated that negative trait adjectives elicited more positive ERP deflections than did positive trait adjectives in the interval between 550 and 800 ms (late positive component) within the near future self condition. However, within the same interval, there were no significant differences between negative and positive traits adjectives in the distant future self condition. The results suggest that negative emotional processing in future self-appraisals is modulated by temporal distance, consistent with predictions of construal level theory.

Motivation matters: differing effects of pre-goal and post-goal emotions on attention and memory

People often show enhanced memory for information that is central to emotional events and impaired memory for peripheral details. The intensity of arousal elicited by an emotional event is commonly held to be the mechanism underlying memory narrowing, with the implication that all sources of emotional arousal should have comparable effects. Discrete emotions differ in their effects on memory, however, with some emotions broadening rather than narrowing the range of information attended to and remembered. Thus, features of emotion other than arousal appear to play a critical role in memory narrowing. We review theory and research on emotional memory narrowing and argue that motivation matters. Recent evidence suggests that emotions experienced prior to goal attainment or loss lead to memory narrowing whereas emotions experienced after goal attainment or loss broaden the range of information encoded in memory. The motivational component of emotion is an important but understudied feature that can help to clarify the conditions under which emotions enhance and impair attention and memory.

Becoming a better person: temporal remoteness biases autobiographical memories for moral events

Our autobiographical self depends on the differential recollection of our personal past, notably including memories of morally laden events. Whereas both emotion and temporal recency are well known to influence memory, very little is known about how we remember moral events, and in particular about the distribution in time of memories for events that were blameworthy or praiseworthy. To investigate this issue in detail, we collected a novel database of 758 confidential, autobiographical narratives for personal moral events from 100 well-characterized healthy adults. Negatively valenced moral memories were significantly more remote than positively valenced memories, both as measured by the valence of the cue word that evoked the memory as well as by the content of the memory itself. The effect was independent of chronological age, ethnicity, gender or personality, arguing for a general emotional bias in how we construct our moral autobiography.

When the "I" looks at the "Me": autobiographical memory, visual perspective, and the self

This article presents a theoretical model of the self processes involved in autobiographical memories and proposes competing hypotheses for the role of visual perspective in autobiographical memory retrieval. Autobiographical memories can be retrieved from either the 1st person perspective, in which individuals see the event through their own eyes, or from the 3rd person perspective, in which individuals see themselves and the event from the perspective of an external observer. A growing body of research suggests that the visual perspective from which a memory is retrieved has important implications for a person's thoughts, feelings, and goals, and is integrally related to a host of self-evaluative processes. We review the relevant research literature, present our theoretical model, and outline directions for future research.

Cultural scripts guide recall of intensely positive life events

In four studies, we examined the temporal distribution of positive and negative memories of momentous life events. College students and middle-aged adults reported events occurring from the ages of 8 to 18 years in which they had felt especially good or especially bad about themselves. Distributions of positive memories showed a marked peak at ages 17 and 18. In contrast, distributions of negative memories were relatively flat. These patterns were consistent for males and females and for younger and older adults. Content analyses indicated that a substantial proportion of positive memories from late adolescence described culturally prescribed landmark events surrounding the major life transition from high school to college. When the participants were asked for recollections from life periods that lack obvious age-linked milestone events, age distributions of positive and negative memories were similar. The results support and extend Berntsen and Rubin's (2004) conclusion that cultural expectations, or life scripts, organize recall of positive, but not negative, events.

Better, Stronger, Faster: Self-Serving Judgment, Affect Regulation, and the Optimal Vigilance Hypothesis

Self-serving judgments, in which the self is viewed more favorably than other people, are ubiquitous. Their dynamic variation within individuals may be explained in terms of the regulation of affect. Self-serving judgments produce positive emotions, and threat increases self-serving judgments (a compensatory pattern that restores affect to a set point or baseline). Perceived mutability is a key moderator of these judgments; low mutability (i.e., the circumstance is closed to modification) triggers a cognitive response aimed at affect regulation, whereas high mutability (i.e., the circumstance is open to further modification) activates direct behavioral remediation. Threats often require immediate response, whereas positive events do not. Because of this brief temporal window, an active mechanism is needed to restore negative (but not positive) affective shifts back to a set point. Without this active reset, an earlier threat would make the individual less vigilant toward a new threat. Thus, when people are sad, they aim to return their mood to baseline, often via self-serving judgments. We argue that asymmetric homeostasis enables optimal vigilance, which establishes a coherent theoretical account of the role of self-serving judgments in affect regulation.

Communicative climates and prospects in cross-cultural gerontology

In this Prologue to a special issue on "communicative practices and climates" in cross-cultural gerontology, we overview some extant themes in research and theory in the study of aging and communication as well as its cross-cultural parameters. Highlighted are features of the papers to follow and, subsequently, proposals are offered towards the development of a cross-culturally robust communication model of successful aging.