Emotional responses to discrimination linked to faster aging
Observational analyses of 397 US adults completing daily diaries and 2,059 surveyed every two years linked stronger emotional responses to discrimination with faster biological aging.
Edited by Boris Djordjevic · AgingResearch.News
An observational analysis used data from 397 US adults aged 25–82 in the Midlife in the United States study and 2,059 aged 42–92 in the Health and Retirement Study. Both samples included women and men. The first group provided up to eight daily diaries before blood collection; the second completed surveys every two years from 2008 to 2016.
Researchers measured how closely each person’s reports of discrimination tracked their negative emotions. They compared these links with two blood-based aging measures calculated from chemical marks on DNA. Stronger links were associated with faster biological aging on DunedinPACE, a measure of aging pace, in both samples. On GrimAge2, a biological age estimate adjusted for actual age, the association appeared in the second sample but not the first. The associations persisted after accounting for discrimination frequency.
Why it matters
The weathering hypothesis concerns how the psychological toll of discrimination may accumulate in the body over time. The authors interpreted their findings as support for this account of biological aging.
Caveats
The observational design cannot establish cause and effect, and the DNA-based measures did not track changes in aging over time. These US adult samples do not establish whether the findings extend to children or people in other countries.
The paper
University of Minnesota
Health Psychology, Jun 15, 2026, Open access
