Remember your high school poetry “All the world is like a stage “, written by William Shakespeare where he narrates the different stages of life? Good to read, nice to listen but a little difficult to accept when it comesto reality.
Although much importance has been given to aging, very little is done to understand the psychological and behavioral changes associated with it. Most of us would have been embarrassed by the odd behavior of old people in public. It is time we get used to such things. New research suggests that the older you become the more likely you are to make someone blush with embarrassment.A new Australian study just published in the journal Psychology and Aging mentions that such behavior is not because old people intend to be rude but because of their lack of tact as a result of age related changes in brain function.
Tests carried out by researchers has found out that people aged 65 to 93 years were more likely to ask each other such personal questions in a public setting than younger people aged 18 to 25.
Yet the study also found that older people were just as likely as younger ones to agree that making public inquiries about private issues was socially inappropriate and embarrassing: so why do older people blurt out such discomforting questions?
The ability to inhibit thoughts and actions is critical for socially appropriate discourse but that ability appears to weaken due to changes in brain function related to the normal ageing process.
It's not just that older people were more likely than younger people to ask personal questions. In fact, young people in our study were more likely to ask each other questions of a personal nature, but they usually did so in private.
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Young people weren't too bothered when their friends were occasionally inappropriate, but older adults felt much less close to those acquaintances who asked about their private lives in public.
