Personality and subjective age: Evidence from six samples.

Abstract

Subjective age is associated with health-related outcomes across adulthood. The present study examined the cross-sectional and longitudinal associations between personality traits and subjective age. Participants (N > 31,000) were from the Midlife in the United States Study (MIDUS), the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), the National Health and Aging Study (NHATS), the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study Graduate (WLSG) and Siblings (WLSS) samples, and the English Longitudinal Study of Aging (ELSA). Demographic factors, personality traits, and subjective age were assessed at baseline. Subjective age was assessed again in the MIDUS, the HRS, and the NHATS, 4 to almost 20 years later. Across the samples and a metaanalysis, higher neuroticism was related to an older subjective age, whereas higher extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness were associated with a younger subjective age. Self-rated health, physical activity, chronic conditions, and depressive symptoms partially mediated these relationships. There was little evidence that chronological age moderated these associations. Multilevel longitudinal analyses found similar associations with the intercept and weak evidence for an association with the slope in the opposite of the expected direction: Lower neuroticism and higher extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness were related to feeling relatively older over time. The present study provides replicable evidence that personality is related to subjective age. It extends existing conceptualization of subjective age as a biopsychosocial marker of aging by showing that how old or young individuals feel partly reflects personality traits.

Feeling older, feeling pain? Reciprocal between-person and within-person associations of pain and subjective age in the second half of life.

“…There might also be recall biases when individuals report their pain in the past 4 weeks, with individuals who had pain at the time of assessment potentially reporting stronger pain levels for the entire 4 weeks, whereas individuals with no current pain complaints might rather neglect prior pain complaints within the past 4 weeks. Likewise, with regard to covariates, there may be additional factors at work that have to be taken into account, such as neuroticism, as greater neuroticism is related with more pain and symptom reporting (Costa & McCrae, 1987; Wettstein et al, 2022), with a lower threshold from which on an individual perceives pain as threatening (Goubert et al, 2004), and with an older subjective age (Stephan, Sutin, Kornadt, et al, 2022). Adjusting to health conditions such as pain might be harder for individuals who score higher on neuroticism, as these individuals have been found to exhibit a higher reactivity to stressors (e.g., Bolger & Schilling, 1991; Suls & Martin, 2005)—and these stressors might include pain—and they tend to use passive and ineffective coping strategies (e.g., Watson & Hubbard, 1996).…”

A study on the factors influencing old age identity among the Chinese elderly

“…While most studies have considered age identity to be a relatively stable variable, Hughes and Touron offer a novel account of how daily life offers a variety of situational contexts and experiences that directly impact the age a person feels at a given moment (45). It has also been found that retirement intentions positively predicted subjective age (46), while personality traits with higher scores such as extroversion, openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness were associated with a younger subjective age (47). The closest study to this paper is Liu et al, who focused on examining the impact of social engagement behaviors on the old age identities of the Chinese elderly and found that political engagement behaviors of the elderly help delay the onset of old age (11).…”