The Construct of Control: Biological and Psychosocial Correlates

The need for mastery and control of one's environment has long been viewed as basic to human motivation (cf. Adler, 1929; deCharms, 1968; Erickson, 1950; Piaget, 1952; White. 1959). More recently it has been suggested that the presence or absence of control has profound cffects on people's emotional, cognitive, and physical well-being (e.g., Glass & Singer, 1972; Seligman, 1975; Wortman & Brehrn, 1975). One of the purposes of the present review is to examine the relationship between opportunities for both actual and perceived control and aging, Do opportunities for the exercise of control and perceptions of competence change with old age, and if so, how do they change? After we review studies of the control-aging relationship, and discuss the methodological and theoretical issues they raise, we turn to the second major question of the chapter: What are the positive and negative effects, espccialIy as they relate to health, of variations in older persons' expectancies of and upportunities for control? An examination of the links between aging and control on one hand. and control and well-being on the other, leads us to address a third and final question:

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