Over-50s Seen as 'Poor Return on Training Investment'

[29 January 2007 - TrainingZone - UK] The over 50s, particularly women, are more likely to miss out on training opportunities in the workplace than younger male employees because HR managers see older women as offering a poor return on investment. That was the result of research carried out into age and gender bias in the allocation of training and development budgets by Almuth McDowall from Surrey University. Working with HR managers in 48 companies, Dr McDowall used a series of fictional vignettes to test out their decision making when allocating funding for training and development. More

Looming Federal Deficits: Don’t Blame the Elderly

[22 January 2007 - The Century Foundation] When Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke warned of looming future budget deficits in his widely quoted statement of January 18, he said nothing incorrect. Nevertheless, his statement is fundamentally misleading, a fact attested to by the failure of every commentary I have read to understand the true significance of the fiscal threat. Mr. Bernanke, following common practice, lumped together three entitlement programs -- Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid -- and, again following common practice, projects frightening growth in total federal spending on them. His summary: "because of demographic changes and rising medical costs, federal expenditures for entitlement programs are projected to rise sharply over the next few decades." What Mr. Bernanke failed to make clear is that the aging of the U.S. population is not the fundamental root of the problem. It is the second cause, rising medical costs, that threatens to break the budget. What is more important, the growth in federal deficits is only a sideshow in our ongoing medical cost crisis. The whole economy -- employers, families, local governments, and the federal government too -- all are staggering under the burden of rising health care costs. To identify this as a crisis of fiscal deficits is like calling global warming a problem of erosion of public beaches. More

Creativity can blossom during Third Age

[15 January 2007 - Columbia Daily Tribune] As we begin to ripen into our Third Age, we might want to keep these words, spoken by that great American artist Georgia O’Keeffe, in mind: "I said to myself, I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me - shapes and ideas so near to me, so natural to my way of being and thinking that it hasn’t occurred to me to put them down. I decided to start anew, to strip away what I had been taught." Her decision to trust herself and her instincts and personal outlook was her creative urge speaking to her. We all have this capacity to present ourselves to the world as a separate and individual human being, but it often takes the confidence and pure nerve that finally rises again in our Third Age. As we develop our own way of mature personal exploration and development, our creativity often makes itself known. It is a type of intelligence that I personally believe everyone has left in him or her from childhood but gets put aside to meet the demands the world makes as we move into our adult years. More

The brain ages well if it works out

[9 January 2007 - North Jersey] You want to stay "young at heart"? Better you should stay "young in the head." The brain is the one part of your body that doesn't know how old you are. In fact, new brain research indicates we can continue to help our brains develop well into later life, says Dr. Paul Nussbaum, a clinical neuropsychologist and professor at the Pittsburgh School of Medicine, who specializes in aging and brain health. He does say that after age 50 we seem to lose the ability to remember names and retrieve information, but this is not necessarily a disease. The concern is that few people discuss the loss of these functions with their doctors because they are afraid to find out something they don't want to hear -- like that they have Alzheimer's, says Nussbaum. More

Help Wanted: Government Seeks Retiring Baby Boomers

[14 January 2007 - Fox News] The federal government is targeting millions of retiring baby boomers to replace the estimated one-half of their colleagues eligible to retire from federal service in the next few years, according to the Partnership for Public Service, an advocacy organization for federal careers. Maryland retirees, in particular, are prime candidates for the second career push because of their proximity to the many federal agencies with homes in both Washington and Maryland. "The government is resource-challenged right now," said John Emens, a federally employed, second-career, baby boomer who spent 22 years living and working in Maryland. "Huge amounts of money are going to homeland security and the Iraq war. If I'm interviewing someone from Laurel and someone from Louisiana, and I can't offer a relocation package, the person from Laurel has the advantage." More than 112,000 federal employees work in Maryland for 41 different federal agencies, according to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. This makes up 6 percent of the total federal workforce. The Department of Health and Human Resources tops the list for the most federal workers employed in the state. The Partnership for Public Service announced its campaign earlier this week to educate retirees about the opportunities available at the federal level. More

Most boomers plan to keep rockin’ -- and not in a chair

[14 January 2007 - The Columbus Dispatch] "Leading-edge" boomers — those who turned 60 last year — are dreaming about retirement. But don’t expect to see the Forever Young Generation on the shuffleboard courts anytime soon: The transition that boomers envision looks different from that of their parents. More individuals are choosing a post-retirement career jump or new business ventures, or skipping retirement altogether, research shows. More baby boomers are seeing retirement as a lifestyle change and a new opportunity rather than the conclusion of a career, and nearly 70 percent report that they expect to continue working into their retirement years, according to AARP surveys. ... "Every eight seconds, another boomer turns 60 and starts contemplating the days ahead," Scott said. "That’s 11,000 individuals daily, 4.5 million a year. They’re living longer, healthier lives. They came of age on sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll. They’ve redefined every stage of life so far. Are they going to pick up golf clubs like dad or granddad? I don’t think so. Only 17 percent say they want a ‘typical’ retirement." But figuring out what to do with the rest of your life can be challenging. To help make the best choices, soon-to-be retirees are turning to retirement coaches, self-help groups and even retreats for inspiration. More

Workers Crave 'Meaning'

[10 January 2007 - TrainingZone - UK] Interviews with over 10,000 workers in the last five years show that companies who fail to create meaning for employees risk business failure, according to corporate psychologists YSC. The consultancy says that its results show that people do not want to just work in a business that is successful, but want to feel engaged in something worthwhile and that they can make a difference. “People spend up to one third of their waking lives in the workplace, so asking the fundamental question of what they get out of that time is important,” said Gurnek Bains, CEO of YSC. More

This raises the issue of how to engage employees in meaningful activity -- which both gives the individual employee the opportunity to do purposeful work, as well contributes to the organization's bottom-line results. The topic of "meaningful work" is also relevant for older workers who are nearing retirement, as well as for those who have left their full-time work but want to stay engaged in some kind of meaningful activity. -- Steve Dahlberg

We're Wired to Connect

[January & February 2007 - AARP The Magazine] Our brains are designed to be social, says bestselling science writer Daniel Goleman -- and they catch emotions the same way we catch colds. ... Have you ever wondered why a stranger’s smile can transform your entire day? Why your eyes mist up when you see someone crying, and the sight of a yawn can leave you exhausted? Daniel Goleman, Ph.D., has wondered, too, and just as he helped revolutionize our definition of what it means to be smart with his 1995 blockbuster, Emotional Intelligence, the two-time Pulitzer nominee and former science reporter for The New York Times has dropped a bombshell on our understanding of human connection in his startling new book, Social Intelligence. More

Ageing nation 'is not a crisis'

[9 January 2007 - BBC] Scotland's ageing population does not represent a "crisis", according to a Holyrood think tank. ... A year-long study by the Scottish Parliament's Futures Forum says the nation can afford to grow old, if it rethinks its approach to retirement. The long-term trends show that Scotland has a shrinking, ageing population. But the forum, headed by Lord Sutherland, believes the ageing crisis is a myth and an older population does not represent an economic time bomb. More

Research: Laughter is Best Medicine

[13 December 2006 - Wellcome Trust] Laughter is truly contagious, and now, scientists studying how our brain responds to emotive sounds believe they understand why. Researchers at University College London (UCL) and Imperial College London have shown that positive sounds such as laughter or a triumphant "woo hoo!" trigger a response in the listener's brain. This response occurs in the area of the brain that is activated when we smile, as though preparing our facial muscles to laugh. The research, funded by the Wellcome Trust, Action Medical Research and the Barnwood House Trust, is published today in the Journal of Neuroscience. Led by Dr Sophie Scott, a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, UCL, the research team played a series of sounds to volunteers while measuring their brain's response using an fMRI scanner. Some of the sounds were positive, such as laughter or triumph, while others were unpleasant, such as screaming or retching. All of the sounds triggered a response in the volunteer's brain in the premotor cortical region, which prepares the muscles in the face to respond accordingly, though the response was greater for positive sounds, suggesting that these were more contagious than negative sounds. The researchers believe this explains why we respond to laughter or cheering with an involuntary smile. More

Happiness, Happiness, Happiness

[8 January 2007 - Steve Dahlberg] It looks like 2007 is going to be the year of happiness, well-being and positive psychology -- or at least the popular exploration of these topics. Scientists and academics are studying the impact of positive emotions and happiness on our personal lives and our surroundings. Economists are looking at how to measure the happiness and well-being of a community, in addition to traditional measures of financial outcomes and impacts. All of these areas promise a balance to our typical focus on "fixing" what's wrong or broken with our lives, our organizations and our communities. The time is here for also focusing on what's good, what works and what we are best at.

Teaching Happiness
[8 January 2007 - WBUR - On Point] If doing for others is the road to happiness, New York's Wesley Autry, who jumped on to subway tracks to save a man's life last week, ought to be the happiest guy on the planet these days. But what about the rest of us? A new science of happiness is attempting to pin down what really lifts the spirit -- to measure it, and to teach it. Happier people live longer. They get fewer colds. They have better relationships and do more for others. Since the time of the ancients, we've had advice on the good life. Now, after a century of measuring well-being by the march of economic indicators, psychologists are saying let's measure and teach well-being itself. More

Happiness 101
[7 Janurary 2007 - New York Times Magazine] More than 200 colleges and graduate schools in the United States offer classes like the one at George Mason. At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Barbara Fredrickson passes out notebooks with clouds on a powdery blue cover for each student. At the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, students pass out chocolates and handwritten notes to school custodians and secretaries. The introductory positive-psychology class at Harvard attracted 855 students last spring, making it the most popular class at the school. “I teach my class on two levels,” says Tal Ben-Shahar, the instructor. “It’s like a regular academic course. The second level is where they ask the question, How can I apply this to my life?” True, the course is known as a gut, but it is also significant that 23 percent of the students who commented on it in the undergraduate evaluation guide said that it had improved their lives. ... Positive psychology brings the same attention to positive emotions (happiness, pleasure, well-being) that clinical psychology has always paid to the negative ones (depression, anger, resentment). Psychoanalysis once promised to turn acute human misery into ordinary suffering; positive psychology promises to take mild human pleasure and turn it into a profound state of well-being. “Under certain circumstances, people — they’re not desperate or in misery — they start to wonder what’s the best thing life can offer,” says Martin Seligman, one of the field’s founders, who heads the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania. Thus positive psychology is not only about maximizing personal happiness but also about embracing civic engagement and spiritual connectedness, hope and charity. “Aristotle taught us virtue isn’t virtue unless you choose it,” Seligman says. More

The Science of Happiness
[January-February 2007 - Harvard Magazine] For much of its history, psychology has seemed obsessed with human failings and pathology. The very idea of psychotherapy, first formalized by Freud, rests on a view of human beings as troubled creatures in need of repair. Freud himself was profoundly pessimistic about human nature, which he felt was governed by deep, dark drives that we could only tenuously control. The behaviorists who followed developed a model of human life that seemed to many mechanistic if not robotic: humans were passive beings mercilessly shaped by the stimuli and the contingent rewards and punishments that surrounded them. After World War II, psychologists tried to explain how so many ordinary citizens could have acquiesced in fascism, and did work epitomized in the 1950 classic The Authoritarian Personality by T.W. Adorno, et al. Social psychologists followed on, demonstrating in laboratories how malleable people are. Some of the most famous experiments proved that normal folk could become coldly insensitive to suffering when obeying “legitimate” orders or cruelly sadistic when playing the role of prison guard. Research funders invested in subjects like conformity, neurosis, and depression. A watershed moment arrived in 1998, when University of Pennsylvania psychologist Martin Seligman, in his presidential address to the American Psychological Association, urged psychology to “turn toward understanding and building the human strengths to complement our emphasis on healing damage.” That speech launched today’s positive psychology movement. “When I met Marty Seligman [in 1977], he was the world’s leading scholar on ‘learned helplessness’ and depression,” says Vaillant. “He became the world’s leading scholar on optimism.” Though not denying humanity’s flaws, the new tack of positive psychologists recommends focusing on people’s strengths and virtues as a point of departure. Rather than analyze the psychopathology underlying alcoholism, for example, positive psychologists might study the resilience of those who have managed a successful recovery—for example, through Alcoholics Anonymous. Instead of viewing religion as a delusion and a crutch, as did Freud, they might identify the mechanisms through which a spiritual practice like meditation enhances mental and physical health. Their lab experiments might seek to define not the conditions that induce depraved behavior, but those that foster generosity, courage, creativity, and laughter. More

Happiness (and how to measure it)
[December 23, 2006-January 5, 2007 - The Economist]

• Affluence: Capitalism can make a soceity rich and keep it free. Don't ask it to make you happy as well. More
• Happiness and Economics: Economics discovers its feelings. Not quite as dismal as it was. More