Feeling younger as a stress buffer: Subjective age moderates the effect of perceived stress on change in functional health.

Abstract

Feeling younger than one's chronological age is associated with various beneficial health outcomes. However, apart from these direct health effects, little is known about the role of subjective age as a potential "buffer" and compensatory resource that might counteract the detrimental effect of health risk factors. We investigated whether the effect of perceived stress as a major health risk factor on change in functional health is smaller among individuals who feel younger. Additionally, we analyzed whether this "stress buffer effect" of subjective age varies by chronological age. Longitudinal data from the German Ageing Survey comprising 3 years (2014-2017) were used (N = 5,039; mean age at baseline: M = 63.91 years, SD = 10.80 years, range 40-95 years). Latent change score models revealed that, controlling for baseline functional health as well as for sociodemographic variables, greater perceived stress was associated with a steeper decline in functional health. This effect increased in size with advancing chronological age. Moreover, a younger subjective age was associated with a less steep decline in functional health. Subjective age additionally exhibited a stress buffer effect: Among individuals who felt younger, the association of greater perceived stress with steeper functional health decline was weaker. This stress buffer effect of subjective age became larger with increasing age. Our findings thus suggest that, particularly among older adults, a younger subjective age might help to buffer functional health decline, not only by directly affecting functional health, but also by compensating and counteracting the detrimental effect of stress on functional health.

Longitudinal associations between perceived stress and views on aging: Evidence for reciprocal relations.

“…Taken together, we found a consistent and robust effect of different personal views on aging on perceived stress, which extends prior studies demonstrating that negative views on aging and age stereotypes undermine stress resilience and affect stress reactions (e.g., Levy & Bavishi, 2018;Levy et al, 2000Levy et al, , 2008Levy, Moffat, et al, 2016), whereas favorable views on aging act as stress buffers (Avidor et al, 2020;Hoffman et al, 2015;Kornadt et al, 2021;Losada-Baltar et al, 2020;Shrira et al, 2020Shrira et al, , 2016Wettstein et al, 2021). However, subjective perceptions of higher stress are in turn also a predictor of less favorable views on aging over time, with a consistent effect across all views on aging constructs included.…”

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”.

“…Subjective aging might be particularly important in highly challenging times such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, as a younger subjective age was found to operate as a “stress buffer” and to reduce the detrimental effects of stress on mental and physical health (Hoffman et al, 2015; Segel-Karpas et al, 2017; Shrira et al, 2014, 2016; Wettstein et al, 2021). Negative aging attitudes, in contrast, were found to be associated with a greater emotional reactivity to daily stressors (Bellingtier & Neupert, 2018).…”

Momentary subjective age is associated with perceived and physiological stress in the daily lives of old and very old adults.

“…Thus, together with those of previous studies, our findings show that associations between stress and subjective age seem to be robust across a variety of timescales, samples, and operationalizations. This is especially noteworthy given the importance of both subjective aging and stress for health outcomes in later life (e.g., Wettstein, Spuling, et al, 2021). Our results also contribute to the emergent empirical work that supports subjective age as reflecting an important biopsychosocial indicator of aging (Schönstein et al, in press; Thyagarajan et al, 2019).…”