Changes in Purpose in Life and Low-Grade Chronic Inflammation Across Older Adulthood
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: Older adults often experience an increase in low-grade chronic inflammation. Purpose in life could act as a protective factor as it is associated with beneficial health outcomes. Purpose in life may exert part of its adaptive function by promoting persistence in goal pursuit. During older adulthood, however, when many individuals experience an increase in intractable stressors and declining resources, the adaptive function of purpose could become reduced. Purpose: We examined whether the association between inter- and intra-individual differences in purpose in life and chronic inflammation differed across older adulthood. Method: We assessed four waves of data among 129 older adults (63–91 years old) across 6 years. Results: Hierarchical linear modeling demonstrated that within-person increases in purpose in life predicted reduced levels of chronic inflammation in early old age (25th percentile or 73 years, coefficient = −.016, p < .01), but not in advanced old age (75th percentile or 81 years, coefficient = .002, p = .67). Between-person differences in purpose were not related to chronic inflammation. Conclusions: These results suggest that greater within-person increases in purpose may protect health processes particularly in early old age but become less effective in advanced old age.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".