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

Abstract

Subjective age, that is the age people feel in relation to their chronological age, can vary on a day-to-day and even momentary basis. Previous long-term and daily-diary studies have shown that elevated stress covaries with older subjective age. However, it is an open question whether such links can also be observed at the momentary level within a given day and go beyond self-reports of stress. Moving ahead, we investigated how two indicators of stress (self-reported: perceived stress; physiological: salivary cortisol) are associated with the age people feel on a momentary basis. We examined data from 118 older (M age = 66.67 years) and 36 very old adults (M age = 85.92 years) who reported their momentary subjective age and perceived stress and also provided saliva samples up to seven times a day over seven consecutive days. Dynamic structural equation models showed that both higher momentary perceived stress and higher cortisol levels preceding the measurement predicted an older momentary subjective age. In contrast, subjective age at the previous

Three facets of emotion regulation in old and very old age: Strategy use, effectiveness, and variability.

“…The design, hypotheses, and analytic strategy of this study have not been preregistered. The study is part of a multicomponent design also involving physiological measures (e.g., cortisol: Kornadt et al, 2022) and a lab-based component (e.g., involving an emotion regulation task: Kunzmann et al, 2022). Details about the study design, procedures, and measures obtained can be found at the following OSF link: https://osf.io/nhzpw/.…”

Long-term aging trajectories of the accumulation of disease burden as predictors of daily affect dynamics and stressor reactivity.

“…The EMIL was a multicomponent study that also involved physiological measures (e.g., cortisol: Kornadt et al, 2022) and a lab-based component (e.g., emotion regulation: Kunzmann et al, 2022). Details about the study design, procedures, and measures are documented at https://osf.io/nhzpw/?view_only=69f637430e 214e168e91f888a8d24dec.…”

Subjective aging: factors influencing individuals’ perspectives

“…The findings are interesting and beg further questions. For example, one study on subjective old age by Kornadt, et al, 2022 added the variable of psychological and physiological stress, which may serve to address some of the disparate challenges that individuals have to cope with which would affect their subjective experience of ageing. A further illuminating and well referenced text on self-reported health and older aboriginals is a commentary by Smith and Flicker (2022) who call for culturally diverse studies in order to understand an individual's subjective experience of ageing.…”