Research Paper
The International Journal of Indian Psychology
ISSN 2348-5396 (e) | ISSN: 2349-3429 (p)
Volume 8, Issue 1,DIP: 18.01.027/20200801
DOI: 10.25215/0801.027
http://www.ijip.in | January- March, 2020
© 2020, P Borah, V Sharma & M Ola; licensee IJIP. This is an Open Access Research distributed under the terms
of the Creative Commons Attribution License (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits
unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any Medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Personality and successful ageing: a review
Pratibha Borah
1
*, Dr Vikas Sharma
2
, Dr. Manpreet Ola
3
ABSTRACT
Longitivity of life among the older population has been witnessed since last century in
developed and developing countries. Maintaining a positive and healthy life is more required
than a longer life. Major challenges of ageing are social, economical and health. Successful
ageing remains a doubt when an older adult is not able to live a healthy life with reduced risk
of disabilities and increased physical and mental functioning. On the other hand old age is the
age of cognitive and physical transitions. In an age of transformation older adults could not
be free from any one of the social-economic and health related challenge. With the rapid
increase of life expectancy when initiatives have been taken to maintain the existing
characteristic for a successful ageing, researches are considering the role of personality in
health. The purpose of the review is to study the role of personality as the predictor of
successful ageing.
Keywords: Old age; older adults; personality; successful ageing.
Ageing is the process of structural and functional change in an organism due to passage of
time. Old age is manifested as decline in peak fertility and physiological function. However,
the age at which one’s productive contribution declines and one tends to be economically
dependent can probably be treated as the onset of the aged stage of life.“National Policy on
older persons 1999” defines person of 60+ age group as elderly. According to a 2016 report
by the ministry for statistics and program implementation, India has 103.9 million elderly,
people above age 60, about 8.5 per cent of the population. There has been rapid increase of
life expectancy since last few years.
Old age is supposed to attract more challenges. Socio demographics and psychosocial aspects
play a crucial role in healthy ageing. Although old age is defined as decline in cognitive an
physical functioning, still there are also evidences maturity and cognitively dealing with
emotions. Thus, individuals differ when they are to define their status as older adults. Socio
cultural environment do play a role in successful ageing. But studies found that even older
adults staying in the most vulnerable conditions away from family have a positive perspective
towards their living.
1
Research scholar, Amity Institute of Clinical Psychology, Amity University, Haryana, India
2
Assistant Professor, Amity Institute of Clinical Psychology, Amity University, Haryana, India
3
Head of the department, Amity Institute of Clinical Psychology, Amity University, Haryana, India
*Responding Author
Received: January 20, 2020; Revision Received: February 8, 2020; Accepted: February 25, 2020