| Popis: |
We often assume that when people report how old they feel (subjective age), they summarize all aspects of themselves (i.e., physical, mental, social) in a single number. But do people consider different aspects equally, and do they even consider each of these aspects? In a preregistered study (osf.io/xtceh), 200 adults aged 50–75 (mean 58 years; 121 females; 73% had at least some college) completed an online survey. They were asked to provide their subjective age, then describe how they constructed it. Participants answered an open-ended question to describe their thoughts, then two follow-up questions to probe these thoughts on domains (cognitive, physical, social), reference points (self, others, older, younger), and comparison context (better than, worse than). As expected, we found that on average participants reported feeling younger than their actual age. Participants reported considering an average of about 4 factors. Participants were more likely to report considering physical factors (mean 0.98 factors) than cognitive (0.73), and least likely to consider social factors (0.40). They were also more likely to consider their own status (mean 2.11 factors) than compare themselves to others (1.21), and more likely to consider their abilities (mean 1.32 factors) than their declines (0.79). There was no difference in relative weight for cognitive (41.3%) and physical (43.4%) considerations, which were both rated more important that social factors (15.3%). Together, this suggests that although equal weight is given to cognitive and physical factors, physical abilities may be the most salient factor that people use when constructing their subjective age. |
