Psychological Mechanisms Of Subjective Age

Abstract

This paper presents the results of studies aimed at comparing the role of temporal and social comparisons in assessing one’s own subjective emotional age (how old do I look) and the subjective emotional age of other people from photographs. Temporal assessments are based on one’s mental ideas about their age identity, while social comparisons suggest implicit ideas about the ages in a given population, including stereotypes, attitudes, ideals. Subjective emotional age is an anchor representation since it is based on one’s feedback about one’s health and appearance. The study participants were 145 mentally healthy people aged 20-70 years. The analysis was conducted by age groups: 20-30; 40-50 60-70 years old. We used the Barak Subjective Age Questionnaire (2009) and 30 recent photographs of people of different ages (10 photos for each age group of 20-30, 40-50, and 60-70 year-olds).The results showed that the assessment of the subjective emotional age is much more accurate from photographs of people. The photographs of young people were estimated to be slightly older than their real age, and photographs of older people were estimated to be younger than their real age. Despite the differences in estimates of one’s own subjective emotional age and the age of people in photographs, there is a general tendency to evaluate older people as being younger than they are. Temporal comparisons are the actualization of one’s mental notions. However, social comparisons and accounting for social age markers also play an important role.