Aging Narratives and Emotions

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the global population of people aged 60 and older is steadily rising, projected to reach 1.4 billion by 2030 and 2 billion by 2050. In response, WHO promotes healthy aging, which is defined as developing and maintaining the functional ability that supports well-being in later life. This functional ability is influenced by an individual’s intrinsic capacity, the environment, and the interactions between the two. In particular, societal attitudes and perceptions of aging are crucial in promoting healthy aging.

This study reports the preliminary findings of a larger National Research Project (PRIN 2022, Prot. 2022RAESSJ) aimed at gaining deeper insights into elderly Italians' perception of aging, and develop and test a health promotion indicator. We conducted interviews with nearly one hundred individuals, exploring their narratives of daily life. These open-ended interviews were transcribed verbatim, producing a corpus of 150,000 words. Emotional Text Mining (ETM), a socioconstructivist, bottom-up, non-supervised method, was used to identify the cultural, symbolic categories, representations, and sentiments related to aging.

The findings reveal that aging is perceived as a multidimensional process of change, characterized by transitions between past and present, work and retirement, living with others and living alone, and a reduction in social life. These transitions are often driven by losses—such as employment, loved ones, or physical strength—and the ongoing need to adapt to new realities.

The study suggests that aging is not solely defined by disease, but is deeply intertwined with continuous social and personal transformation. As Erikson observed, this stage of life challenges individuals to reorganize their social and relational lives in response to the physical, mental and social changes of aging. Ultimately, the study emphasizes that aging cannot be reduced to biological decline, offering a richer understanding of how elderly people experience and express their daily life.