Trajectories of attitude toward own aging and subjective age from 2008 to 2020 among middle-aged and older adults: Partial evidence of a “COVID-19 effect”.

Abstract

As older adults have frequently been portrayed as one homogeneous and vulnerable risk group in public debates and in the media immediately after the outbreak of the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, a general shift toward less favorable attitude toward own aging (ATOA) might have resulted. In contrast, individuals may feel younger than before the pandemic, reflecting a psychological mechanism to avoid identifying themselves with the old age "risk group." We investigate 12-year trajectories of ATOA and subjective age among middle-aged and older German adults based on assessments between 2008 and Summer 2020 (N = 7,730; age in 2008: 40-93 years, M = 62.41). Based on longitudinal multilevel regression models, we found that for ATOA, a model including a potentially "pandemic-driven" change component between 2017 and 2020 in addition to an overall linear change between 2008 and 2020 revealed a better fit than a linear change model without that additional change component. Mean-level decline in ATOA between 2017 and 2020 was five times steeper in such a model than in a linear change model that did not include an additional 2017-2020 change component. The extent of intraindividual ATOA change between 2017 and 2020 varied interindividually, but for more than 99% of the sample, particularly among those with poorer self-rated health, ATOA became less favorable. There was very limited evidence for a pandemic-specific change in subjective age. In conclusion, our findings suggest that the early phase of the pandemic might have caused a change toward less favorable ATOA, whereas it did not affect subjective age.

Differential personality change earlier and later in the coronavirus pandemic in a longitudinal sample of adults in the United States

“…Socio-demographic variables were entered at level 2 to control for age, gender, race, Hispanic/Latino ethnicity, and education. Following previous studies on pandemic-induced change in subjective age [ 21 ] and well-being [ 22 ] compared to pre-pandemic levels, we specified a change component that was a time-varying dummy variable that compared all personality assessments prior to the pandemic (May 2014-February 2020; pre-pandemic personality) to the personality assessments during the pandemic (March 2020-February 2022; which reflect normative history-related change during the pandemic). Two dummy-coded variables were created.…”

Has the COVID-19 pandemic affected older adults’ personal and general views on aging? Evidence for losses and gains.

“…This pandemic dummy variable, indicating a potential period effect in 2020, is-in a strict sense-not a slope component in its own, but an intraindividual deviation in 2020 from the general slope. This approach, which is adopted from other studies addressing COVID-19 effects (Kivi et al, 2021;Wettstein & Wahl, 2021c), was considered as the most appropriate one, as alternative approaches such as piecewise models would require setting a change point in 2017-that which is not exactly when one would expect the COVID-19 effect to set in-and would estimate each of the two slope components based on only two measurement occasions only (Slope 1: 2012 and 2015; Slope 2: 2017 and 2020). Additional technical details of how the COVID-19 pandemic change effect was modeled can be found in online Supplemental Materials Part 1.…”

COVID-19 and perceiving finitude: Associations with future time perspective, death anxiety, and ideal life expectancy.

“…And would such effects and consequences depend on the age of individuals? In general, larger samples with multiwave pre- and postpandemic data will allow to investigate patterns of change before and after the onset of the pandemic and to more systematically test the presence of a “COVID-19 effect” (Wettstein & Wahl, 2021). Finally, the question arises whether our results are transferable to contexts outside of the pandemic.…”