Abstract
Subjective age—the age people think of themselves as being—is measured in a representative Danish sample of 1,470 adults between 20 and 97 years of age through personal, in-home interviews. On the average, adults younger than 25 have older subjective ages, and those older than 25 have younger subjective ages, favoring a lifespan-developmental view over an age-denial view of subjective age. When the discrepancy between subjective and chronological age is calculated as a proportion of chronological age, no increase is seen after age 40; older respondents feel 20% younger than their actual age. Demographic variables (gender, income, and education) account for very little variance in subjective age.
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This work was supported by a grant from the Danish Research Council for the Humanities and by National Institutes of Health Grant R01 MH066079.
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Rubin, D.C., Berntsen, D. People over forty feel 20% younger than their age: Subjective age across the lifespan. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 13, 776–780 (2006). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03193996
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03193996