Daily health problems, views of aging, and the moderating role of awareness of age-related changes

Views of aging, such as subjective age or subjective accelerated aging, are related to health problems: In longitudinal and daily assessments, experiencing more health issues is associated with more negative views of aging. This study investigates whether the association between health problems and multiple views of aging constructs is moderated by people's experience of age-related gains and losses. We therefore expected people to demonstrate more negative views of aging on days with more health problems. Following previous research on awareness of age-related changes as an important moderator for the impact of age-related experiences to developmental outcomes, we assumed that (1) on days when participants experienced higher awareness of age-related gains the adverse effect of health problems on views of aging would be reduced, (2) the association between health problems and views of aging should be amplified on days when participants experienced higher awareness of age-related losses.

A sample of N = 69 participants aged 52-75 years (Mage = 62.72, SD = 5.57) reported their subjective age (uni- and multidimensional), subjective accelerated aging, health problems, and awareness of age-related gains and losses for up to 14 days of daily diary assessments. Age, gender, education, and baseline health were included as covariates.

Multilevel models showed that perceiving more age-related losses was associated with an exacerbation of the positive association between daily health problems and multidimensional subjective age and subjective accelerated aging.

Our findings underscore the importance of perceiving age-related losses in daily life. Perceiving changes as age-related may influence how daily experiences are interpreted and their impact on developmental outcomes.