Laudation for Professor Laura Carstensen
Delivered in Leuven on 2 February 2012 by
Professors Mathieu Vandenbulcke and Ralf Krampe, promotores
Your Eminence,
Honourable Rector,
Your Excellencies,
Esteemed Colleagues,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Dear Students,
Professor Laura Carstensen’ first encounter with hospital life – a life familiar to many elderly persons – came when she was actually very young. After a terrible car accident, she spent several months in the hospital, first struggling for her life and then confined to a hospital bed. Nursing a number of serious injuries, Laura quickly came to understand how injury or sickness can force a person to depend on others—others who provide care gladly but expect nothing in return. To Laura, hospital life boiled down to either passively accepting others’ care or actively fighting for her own independence. Her experiences, recorded in her book, led her to an interest in the psychology of ageing. Her father, a professor, encouraged her along. Despite his busy schedule, he attended psychology classes on her behalf at the University of Rochester while Laura was still hospitalised, tape-recording lectures for her. Laura continued her studies at Rochester, received her Bachelor’s degree and, by then fascinated by psychology, went on to obtain a PhD in Clinical Psychology from West Virginia University. Today, Laura is Professor of Psychology at Stanford University, where she also holds the Fairleigh S. Dickinson Jr. Chair for Public Policy. She has become one of the world's leading authorities on longevity and ageing. Her work centres on lifespan psychology, notably the development of motivation and emotion in adulthood. Professor Carstensen's research has shown us how our perspective on the life cycle determines what we seek and value in our relations with others, and how, as we get older, changes in this perspective lead to emotional awareness of which young adults can only dream.
A behavioural scientist myself, I know all too well how difficult is can be to do research that has a direct impact on people’s daily lives but that also meets the changing standards of scientific rigor. These standards tend to push psychologists seeking to publish in the absolute top journals to employ multi-million-dollar brain imaging devices and other highly technological research tools. Our laureate is one notable exception in this regard. In her work on the socioemotional selectivity theory, she and her colleagues presented an ingenious methodological approach to uncouple the effects of individuals' ages and their time-perspective or sense of time. Professor Carstensen had long hypothesised that older adults' social focus on nearby family members was not, as is often assumed, a result of withdrawal and search for support. In their landmark studies, they investigated socioemotional preferences in seniors, but also in young adults, including groups who were suffering from a lethal disease. Young adults with little time to live focused almost exclusively on the emotional quality of relations, just as very old people do. In contrast, older adults whose time perspective widen because of successful medical treatment or a new life perspective become as diverse in their social preferences as younger people.
Besides her eminent contributions to research, Laura is also a great teacher, a critical colleague, and a wonderful collaborator. She has for many years served on the Board of Science Advisors to the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin. I received most of my scientific training there and I vividly remember how afraid we all were (director to doctoral student) of those biannual showdowns that could cause a dear project to vaporise before the end of the week in a cloud of ‘have you considered this yet?’ Laura has always been clear, constructive and dedicated to the highest scientific standards. She initiated some of the Max Planck Institute’s best research during her stays there and shaped the scientific careers of quite a few colleagues from my cohort. A short look at her list of publications and current activities shows that she is moving ‘full steam ahead’ on this mission.
Her dual roles as eminent research psychologist and Stanford chair in public policy present quite an exceptional combination. Professor Carstensen is the founding director of the Stanford Center on Longevity, a unique interdisciplinary collaboration of excellent people who aim at no less than transforming the culture around human ageing. The Center's mission is to find innovative ways to use science and technology to solve the problems of people over 50. Such solutions include changing our healthcare systems, our entitlement programmes, and our personal behaviours and lifestyles.
Laura is a scientist with a mission and a message. In her latest book, A Long Bright Future: An Action Plan for a Lifetime of Happiness, Health, and Financial Security, Professor Carstensen writes about the promises and the challenges of a remarkable gift mankind received somewhat unexpectedly: an extra 20-30 years of life. She warns us about the myths of horrible ageing, which cloud our imagination, create social stresses and divisions between generations and prevent us from preparing society and ourselves for longer lives. Her story is not about successful ageing as a means to avoid old age. It is about long life and how it is up to us to write its story. Professor Carstensen's research shows us that older people have much to offer, and that, for some of the most important things in life – emotions and happiness in social relationships – the best years are ahead of us.
Dear Professor Carstensen, dear Laura, we are grateful and proud that you have accepted the honorary doctoral degree of our university and we look forward to a long, bright future of inspiring work; work that doubtless will improve our own efforts toward advancing the science of ageing for the betterment of our societies.
For these reasons, we ask you, honoured Rector, on the recommendation of the Academic Council, to confer the degree of doctor honoris causa of KU Leuven upon Professor Laura Carstensen.
