Loneliness can be seen as a social failure subject to causal search: Why am I lonely? Why do I lack friends? According to attribution theory, answers to these questions can influence emotions, motivation, and behaviours. This study examined the relationships between various affiliative causal beliefs (i.e., beliefs about loneliness and friendship development), social participation, and loneliness among older adults (72+ years). Cross-sectional and longitudinal (over five years) results showed that more strongly endorsing internal/controllable causal beliefs (i.e., believing that making friends depends on effort) related to greater social participation. Moreover, greater social participation related to less loneliness. External/uncontrollable causal beliefs predicted greater loneliness. In fully addressing loneliness, it may be important to focus on people's causal beliefs.

The concept of "successful aging" has become widely accepted in gerontology, yet continues to have no common underlying definition. Researchers have increasingly looked to older individuals for their lay definitions of successful aging. The present analysis is based on responses to five questionnaires administered to surviving participants of the male Manitoba Follow-up Study cohort (www.mfus.ca) in 1996, 2000, 2002, 2004, and 2006 (n = 2,043 men were alive at a mean age of 78 years in 1996). One question on each survey asked: "What is YOUR definition of successful aging?" Applying content analysis to the 5,898 narratives received over the 11 years, we developed a coding system encompassing 21 main themes and 86 sub-themes defining successful aging. We quantitatively analyzed trends in prevalence of themes of successful aging prospectively over time. Our findings empirically support colleagues' past suggestions to shift from defining successful aging in primarily biomedical terms, by taking lay views into account.

We consider reasons why poorer health might erode EPA for men (but not women) and why living alone might erode EPA for women (but not men).

Folk beliefs such as "there's a silver lining in every cloud" reflect a positive approach to life that maps onto the notion of interpretive secondary control, and may have consequences for well being. The authors assessed older individuals' agreement with folk beliefs, and examined gender differences in their adaptive implications for well being and positive and negative emotion, both cross-sectionally and longitudinally over 7 years. Following previous research on interpretive secondary control, the authors anticipated that folk beliefs would be (a) more strongly endorsed by or (b) more beneficial to older women than to older men, particularly among those with serious health problems. Although women and men endorsed folk beliefs equally, women benefited more reliably from these beliefs, and women with serious health problems benefited the most.

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