Short-term fluctuations in multi-dimensional subjective age and their associations with daily health and psychological wellbeing

Subjective age, or how old one feels, is associated with positive health and psychological outcomes. Feeling younger can predict more physical activity (Wienert et al., 2017), lower risk of frailty (Li et al., 2021), less depressive symptoms, and better subjective wellbeing (Alonso Debreczeni & Bailey, 2020), above and beyond chronological age. However, most of this work is based on examining the single item Felt age (i.e., how old do you feel?) which may overlook potential differences between subjective age dimensions that assess how old one feels in terms of their appearance, behaviour, mental performance, interests and how old they wish to be. Existing frameworks support the link between subjective age impacting one’s health and wellbeing (e.g., Wurm et al., 2017) but few studies have examined the mechanisms behind this association. Hughes and Touron (2021) suggest that subjective age influences one’s overall health and wellbeing through everyday lifestyle choices including physical activity, diet, and social and mental engagement. However, research has yet to examine whether daily fluctuations in multidimensional subjective ages are related to daily health and wellbeing. In addition to multidimensional subjective age, self-perceptions of aging (one’s beliefs and attitudes about their own aging) and expectations regarding aging (expected changes in one’s physical, cognitive and socioemotional abilities due to aging) may also be important in daily health and wellbeing. These constructs are linked to long-term health outcomes (e.g., Levy, 2009; Wurm et al., 2017) and may shape how individuals interpret and respond to daily experiences of aging. To better isolate the unique effect of subjective age fluctuations, both constructs will be included as trait-level covariates to account for broader views of aging. Using data from the Labs without Walls project, the current study aims to assess whether there is a relationship between daily multidimensional subjective ages, objectively measured health indicators and self-reported psychological wellbeing. Daily health measures include daily steps, exercise minutes, heart rate variability (a biomarker of stress), resting heart rate (a biomarker of cardiovascular fitness), and hours of sleep. Daily psychological measures are resilience and fatigue. We expect that proportionally younger subjective ages will be associated with better objectively measured health and self-reported psychological wellbeing. We will also examine lagged, next-day relationships between variables to determine whether there are carry-over effects of subjective age on these health and wellbeing outcomes. Bi-directional associations are also explored to determine the time-ordered relationships between subjective age and the various health and psychological outcomes.