Psychological and Social Aspects of Mental Health in the Elderly: A Summarizing Co-lecture

Abstract

In a most remarkable novel entitled The Devils of Loudun the following statement is made: “Civilisation can in one of its aspects be defined as a systematic attempt to prevent the individual citizen from being exposed to situations that invite barbaric behavior.” The author is the renowned Aldous Huxley and the book was first published in 1952, when most of the research in psychology on situational determinants of individual behavior had yet to be carried out. But in the 30 years to follow, Huxley was proven to have been a very keen observer of some of the major determinants of the behavior of the human species. In 1981 the outstanding social psychologists Furnham and Argyle published a book under the title The Psychology of Social Situations that summarized the major findings of scientific psychology in this domain. One important conclusion from their review is that when one fills out Kurt Lewin’s famous formula that B=f(S,P), on the basis of the available empirical evidence more than half of the variance in behavior (0.52) has to be attributed to S (ituation) and less than one-quarter (0.24) to P (ersonality). It is evident that one has to be careful in using a generalizing statement like this since its tenability is among other things dependent upon what definitions of situation and personality one uses, an issue that will not be pursued in the present context.