The Nature and Long-Term Predictors of Short-Term Within-Context and Across-Context Variability in Four Major Life Domains – A Multi-Domain Extension of the EMIL Project

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Denis Gerstorf; Professorin Dr. Ute Kunzmann; Professor Dr. Oliver Karl Schilling; Professorin Dr. Cornelia Wrzus
• Subject Area: Developmental and Educational Psychology ; Personality Psychology, Clinical and Medical Psychology, Methodology
• Term: since 2017
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 322739751

This project aims for a combination of ambulatory and laboratory-based assessments of old and very old participants to examine short-term intraindividual variability in four key domains of functioning: Emotion, interpersonal skills, daily activities, and cognition. Basically, we distinguish potentially adaptive from potentially maladaptive forms of intraindividual variability: Whereas variability within the same or similar situational contexts is primarily a sign of functional instability (within-context instability), variability across different situational contexts may be primarily a sign of functional flexibility (across-context flexibility). Following this basic distinction, the project addresses two overarching objectives: (1) To provide a comprehensive quantification and examination of within-context and across-context variability in each of the four domains of functioning, as well as their association between these domains. (2) An examination of long-term antecedent predictors of within-context instability and across-context flexibility in the four domains – focusing in particular on long-term changes in key resources (e.g., physical health, cognitive abilities, etc.) as risk factors for high instability and/or low flexibility. We follow-up old and very old participants from two ongoing longitudinal studies – i.e., the Interdisciplinary Longitudinal Study of Adult Development (ILSE) and satellite project EMIL, as well as the Berlin Aging Study II (BASE-II) and satellite project CorAge. Linking in vivo and lab examinations of short-term intraindividual variability with a rich set of medical, cognitive, and psychosocial measures that have been tracked over more than 20 years will allow to intensely address the above study objectives. The suggested research aims to add to the increasing body of evidence on intraindividual variability in old age a differentiated and comprehensive view an both, adaptive flexibility and maladaptive instability in key domains of functioning. Doing so will not only resolve existing inconsistencies in the findings published so far, but promises to provide new insights on resilience and risk for the old and very old individuals’ psycho-social functioning in everyday life.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: USA
• Cooperation Partner: Professor Nilam Ram, Ph.D.