Continuity Theory Definition The continuity theory of aging

Continuity Theory

Definition The continuity theory of aging relates that personality, values, morals, preferences, role activity, and basic patterns of behavior are consistent throughout the life span, regardless of the life changes one encounters.

Continuity Theory 1. States that older adults try to preserve and maintain internal & external structures by using strategies that maintain continuity. Meaning that older people may seek to use familiar strategies in familiar areas of life. 2. In later life, adults tend to use continuity as an adaptive strategy to deal with changes that occur during normal aging. Continuity theory has excellent potential for explaining how people adapt to their own aging. 3. Changes come about as a result of the aging person's reflecting upon past experience & setting goals for the future.

It holds that, in making adaptive choices, middle-aged and older adults attempt to preserve and maintain existing internal and external structures; and they prefer to accomplish this objective by using strategies tied to their past experiences of themselves and their social world. Change is linked to the person's perceived past, producing continuity in inner psychological characteristics as well as in social behavior and in social circumstances.

Continuity is thus a grand adaptive strategy that is promoted by both individual preference and social approval.