Evidence is accumulating on the effects of subjective aging-that is, how individuals perceive their own aging process-on health and survival in later life. The goal of this article is to synthesize findings of existing longitudinal studies through a meta-analysis. A systematic search in PsycInfo, Web of Science, Scopus, and Pubmed resulted in 19 longitudinal studies reporting effects of subjective aging on health, health behaviors, and longevity. The authors combine the outcomes reported in these studies using a random effects meta-analysis, assuming that there would be differences in effect sizes across studies. The meta-analysis resulted in an overall significant effect of subjective aging (likelihood ratio = 1.429; 95% confidence interval = 1.273-1.604; p < .001). The analyses revealed heterogeneity, with stronger effects for studies with a shorter period of follow-up, for studies of health versus survival, for studies with younger participants (average age of the studies varies between 57 and 85 years with a median of 63 years), and for studies in welfare systems where state provisions of welfare are minimal. However, effects did not vary either across different operationalizations of subjective aging or by study quality. Subjective aging has a small significant effect on health, health behaviors, and survival. Further theoretical conceptualizations and empirical studies are needed to determine how subjective aging contributes to health and survival.

Humans are able to reflect on and interpret their own aging. Thus, as individuals grow older, calendar age may become increasingly a subjective variable. This theoretical paper proposes the concept of Awareness of Aging (AoA) as a superordinate construct that can serve an integrative function in developmental research on subjective aging. It is argued that the AoA construct can incorporate the theoretical components of other existing concepts by acknowledging that judgments of subjective aging tend to be made on an awareness continuum ranging from pre-conscious/implicit to conscious/explicit. We also argue that processes of AoA are inherently self-related processes and that AoA is a particular aspect of self-awareness that results in specific aging-related self-knowledge. Over time, aging individuals incorporate this self-knowledge into their self-concept and personal identity. We provide theoretical evidence showing that although all major theories of adult development and aging draw on phenomena related to AoA, the explicit incorporation of aging-related awareness processes has been missing. We also provide an overarching framework to illustrate in a heuristic way how AoA in combination and interaction with other influences affects developmental outcomes. Finally, we argue that attention to AoA-related processes has a number of societal and applied implications and thereby addresses issues of applied developmental psychology.

We examined the influence of individual views of aging on health changes in later life. We hypothesized that aging-related cognitions affect health changes irrespective of control beliefs and that the impact of aging-related cognitions on health is higher than for the reverse direction of causality. We based our analyses on data from the longitudinal part of the German Aging Survey (N = 1,286; participants were 40-85 years of age at baseline). Because of the selectivity of the sample, we also computed the same analyses for the baseline sample (N = 4,034) with estimated Time 2 data for those individuals who dropped out. The results of structural equation modeling were concordant with our hypotheses, and therefore they corroborate previous findings on the importance of beliefs about aging.

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A 'views-on-ageing'-component within a physical activity intervention affects change in physical activity via change in views on ageing. Views on ageing are a promising intervention technique to be incorporated into future physical activity interventions for older adults.

Physical activity is one of the most important health behaviours associated with the prevention and management of chronic diseases in older adults, but this potential is often insufficiently used. The present study examined for the first time whether a positive view on ageing (PVA) may contribute to a higher level of physical activity. Analyses were based on the German Ageing Survey, a longitudinal population-based survey (N = 4034) on middle-aged and older adults (40-85 years) conducted in the years 1996 and 2002. As hypothesised, middle-aged adults with a PVA not only engaged in physical activity in the form of sports more frequently; they even increased this activity provided that they were healthy enough to do so. For older adults, PVA was particularly associated with more regular walking and increases of walking over time. Because walking is often still recommended in spite of health problems, it was remarkable that even older people with worse health walked just as regularly as those with good health, provided that they had a positive view on ageing. The results shed some light on recent findings about the importance of PVA for health and longevity and point to a partial mediation between PVA and health by physical exercise.

In this chapter, we carry out a narrative review of the longitudinal impact of subjective aging on health and survival. We have a specifi c focus on the different pathways which can explain the relation of subjective aging to health and survival. We focus on the three most common conceptualizations of subjective age: (a) age identity, (b) self-perceptions of aging, and (c) self-perceptions of age-related growth and decline. For each concept, we present the theoretical background, the empirical studies on the effects on health and survival, and conclude with the pathways which might explain these effects. The chapter ends with a heuristic model that synthesizes the theories and fi ndings in describing how subjective aging is related to different psychological resources, which are in turn related to health and survival. Last, we provide some possible directions for further research in this area.