Sense of social interaction in the elderly

The intuit is that the need for social interaction increases in the elderly. The issue, however, has not been thoroughly investigated. In the present study we posed the following main questions: (i) does the need for social interaction indeed increase in older age? and (ii) is there a defined personality trait that would interact with the level of social interaction? The study was one of a self-reported group survey. A total of 50 women were enrolled, who were divided into two even contrasting age-groups: young, 20-30 years, and senior, 60-80 years old. The main exclusion criterion was depression, which was screened for before subject enrollment. The results demonstrate that the need for interpersonal meetings was similar in the young and old women; the mean score amounted to 15.4 +/-0.5 and 15.6 +/-0.6 points, respectively. The most frequent reason for the meetings in both young and old women was to socialize; 80 and 68% of women, respectively. The rarest, in turn, reason was to get help in everyday life matters; 8% young and 12% old women. Thus, we failed to show appreciable differences in the need, character, and goals of social interaction between the two age-groups of women. Social interaction had most often a free and selfless character. We also found that extraversion, independent of age, facilitated social interaction. In conclusion, although to the question asked of whether 'the older the person, the more he/she misses the interaction with others' 76-88% of the surveyed women in both age-groups answered affirmatively, the findings of the present study failed to confirm that.