Oct. 16, 2006 — Older people accused of being 'blunt' can blame their deteriorating brain for their straight talking, an Australian researcher suggests.
Bill von Hippel, a psychologist and associate professor at the University of New South Wales, said this deterioration means the brain can't properly inhibit older people from saying inappropriate things.
"Older adults tend to be more likely to ask about private or personal issues in public than younger adults are," said von Hippel. "And we have suggestive evidence that this is brought about by declines in frontal lobe functioning."
He was recently awarded an Australian Research Council grant to investigate the theory and the implications for older people's health.
Von Hippel said the stereotype is that people over the age of 65 are more likely to speak their mind because they have earned the right to, and because they are often seen as a source of wisdom.
But he said they can lose friends as it can be socially inappropriate.
"If I'm asking you about your hemorrhoids in public, even if I don't mean to be mean by doing it, I'm nevertheless humiliating you and I'm not providing you with positive emotional support," he said.
And this can be a health issue, says von Hippel, because losing friends can lead to loneliness, which is bad for both mental and physical health, especially in older people.
Experiments
In recent experiments, von Hippel interviewed 80 people from several groups of older and younger adults about the likelihood that other members of the group were likely to say certain inappropriate things.
He found that older people were more likely to ask in public if someone had put on weight, about their hemorrhoids, or whether they were still having problems with their partner.
He then tested how well the same people inhibited themselves, an ability controlled by the frontal lobes, by answering trick trivia questions.
For example, they were asked "What color are tigers' spots?"
