Functional impairment representations and behavioral intentions in later life: a motivational perspective

Functional impairments among older adults are associated with reduced quality of life and greater healthcare burden. However, how older adults cognitively and emotionally represent these impairments and how such representations relate to behavioral intentions (i.e. intentions to engage in recommended health behaviors) remains underexplored. This study applies the Common Sense Model of Self-Regulation to examine whether representations of impairments are shaped by age-related defensive motivation and how they are associated with behavioral intentions.

Three hundred one Canadian adults aged 50-95 completed within-person assessments of cognitive and emotional representations across six functional impairments and reported health behavior intentions for each.

Older age was associated with more positive emotional representations of functional limitations, and perceived timeline (acute vs chronic impairment) moderated the association between age and consequence representations. Specifically, older adults reported less severe perceived consequences for functional impairments perceived as chronic as compared with those perceived as acute. Timeline representations did not moderate the associations of age with identity, personal control, and treatment control representations. Cognitive representations of functional impairments, in turn, predicted behavioral intentions to manage the functional impairment: more perceived negative consequences, stronger identity representations, and higher perceived treatment control were associated with stronger behavioral intentions, while higher personal control was unexpectedly associated with lower behavioral intentions. A moderated mediation analysis revealed that, for chronic impairments only, older age was associated with lower behavioral intentions to manage a functional impairment through less perceived negative consequences .

These findings highlight a motivational tradeoff in aging, where emotional self-protection may undermine proactive health behaviors, and suggest it is important to balance emotional self-protection with accurate threat perception.