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Predicting one’s own death: the relationship between subjective and objective nearness to death in very old age

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Abstract

Previous research found that the perception of a limited remaining lifetime is related to goal setting, social network composition, attitudes, and behavior. However, to better understand those findings, it is important to know if this subjective perception of being close to death corresponds with the time a person actually survives. The aim of the present study was to examine the predictive and time–dynamic relationship between subjective and objective nearness to death using 16-year longitudinal data from the Berlin Aging Study (Baltes and Mayer 1999; N = 516 older adults between 70 and 104 years). Older adults who felt close to death at the first measurement occasion were more likely to die over the following 16 years than persons who did not report feeling close to dying. Results of multilevel analyses revealed that there was a time–dynamic relationship such that subjective nearness to death increased as a function of objective nearness to death. Our results indicate that very old adults seem to have quite accurate perceptions of their nearness to death.

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Notes

  1. Due to a shortened assessment protocol, no data was available for T2.

  2. We acknowledge that—as it is generally the case for longitudinal studies that use distance-to-death as a time metric—data incompleteness was not completely missing at random (i.e., due to mortality; but see Schafer and Graham 2002, who suggest that missing at random procedures may be applicable in such cases). This may have reduced the variance as well as the covariance of our variables.

  3. Objective nearness to death explained 6% of the within-person variance in subjective nearness to death (\( R_{\text{within}}^{2} = 0.058 \)).

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Acknowledgments

This article reports data from the Berlin Aging Study (BASE; www.base-berlin.mpg.de). BASE was initiated by the late Paul B. Baltes, in collaboration with Hanfried Helmchen, Psychiatry, Elisabeth Steinhagen-Thiessen, Internal Medicine and Geriatrics, and Karl Ulrich Mayer, Sociology. Financial support came from the Max Planck Society, the Free University of Berlin, the German Federal Ministry for Research and Technology (1989–1991, 13 TA 011 + 13 TA 011/A), the German Federal Ministry for Family, Senior Citizens, Women, and Youth (1992–1998, 314-1722-102/9 + 314-1722-102/9a), and the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences’ Research Group on Aging and Societal Development (1994–1999). During preparation of this article, Dana Kotter-Grühn was supported by a research fellowship (KO 3579/3-1) awarded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft/German Research Foundation (DFG). We thank the anonymous reviewers for very useful comments on a previous draft.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, North Carolina State University, Campus Box 7650, Raleigh, NC, 27695-7650, USA

    Dana Kotter-Grühn & Daniel Grühn

  2. Department of Psychology and Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA 

    Jacqui Smith

  3. Center for Lifespan Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany

    Jacqui Smith

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  1. Dana Kotter-Grühn
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  2. Daniel Grühn
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  3. Jacqui Smith
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Correspondence to Dana Kotter-Grühn.

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Communicated by H.-W. Wahl.

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Kotter-Grühn, D., Grühn, D. & Smith, J. Predicting one’s own death: the relationship between subjective and objective nearness to death in very old age. Eur J Ageing 7, 293–300 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10433-010-0165-1

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