Senior 'Bluntness' Linked to Frontal Lobe

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?"

He found that younger people were more likely to restrain themselves from answering the trick question, whereas older people were more likely to blurt out "black" and then realize it was a trick.

Von Hippel said evidence from these two experiments shows that the same older people, who were more likely to be blunt, have lower inhibitory power in their frontal lobes.

Future Studies

Von Hippel would now like to do similar tests on a larger number of people using magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, to check if atrophy in the frontal lobes correlates with bluntness in older adults.

For now, he can not rule out other causes for the bluntness, such as early stage dementia.

But he said the frontal lobe theory is supported by other research showing the people with frontal lobe brain damage are often more socially inappropriate.

An Uncomfortable Idea?

But von Hippel said his work has been criticized.

"I think it's perceived as an attack on older adults," he said. "I don't believe it is."

He said it was already accepted that atrophy of the frontal lobes occurs as you age and this affects memory and slows down brain processing.

"What our research is showing is that there are social consequences as well," he said.