Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2017 Dec:46:27-43.
doi: 10.1016/j.dr.2017.08.002. Epub 2017 Sep 14.

How do views on aging affect health outcomes in adulthood and late life? Explanations for an established connection

Susanne Wurm  1 , Manfred Diehl  2 , Anna E Kornadt  3 , Gerben J Westerhof  4 , Hans-Werner Wahl  5
Affiliations

How do views on aging affect health outcomes in adulthood and late life? Explanations for an established connection

Susanne Wurm et al. Dev Rev. 2017 Dec.

Abstract

Personal views on aging, such as age stereotypes and subjective aging, can affect various health outcomes in later life. For the past 20 years or so, a large body of experimental and longitudinal work has provided ample evidence for this connection. Thus, it seems timely to better understand the pathways of this linkage. The majority of existing studies has either focused on age stereotypes or subjective aging. This theoretical paper provides a systematic comparison of major theoretical approaches that offer explanations through which different views on aging may affect health. After a short review of findings on the short- and long-term effects of different views on aging, we describe theoretical approaches that provide explanations of underlying mechanisms for the effect of both uni- and multidimensional views on aging on health outcomes. We compare the specific characteristics of these approaches, provide a heuristic framework and outline recommendations for future research routes. A better understanding of the impact of different views on aging on health outcomes is not only relevant for basic research in life-span developmental psychology, geropsychology and health psychology, it has also implications for intervention research and public health practices.

Keywords: Age stereotype; Health; Pathways; Self-perceptions of aging; Subjective age; Views on aging.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Heuristic framework on pathways from views on aging to health outcomes.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Allen PM, Mejia ST, & Hooker K (2015). Personality, self-perceptions, and daily variability in perceived usefulness among older adults. Psychology and Aging, 30(3), 534–543. 10.1037/pag0000039. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Auman C, Bosworth HB, & Hess TM (2005). Effect of health-related stereotypes on physiological responses of hypertensive middle-aged and older men. The Journals of Gerontology: Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, 60B(1), P3–P10. 10.1093/geronb/60.1.P3. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Baltes PB (1987). Theoretical propositions of life-span developmental psychology: On the dynamics between growth and decline. Developmental Psychology, 23(5), 611–626. 10.1037/0012-1649.23.5.611. - DOI
    1. Baltes PB, Lindenberger U, & Staudinger UM (2006). Life span theory in developmental psychology. In Damon W & Lerner RM (Eds.). Theoretical models of human development (Vol. 1, pp. 569–664). New York: Wiley.
    1. Barak B, & Stern B (1986). Subjective age correlates: A research note. The Gerontologist, 26(5), 571–578. 10.1093/geront/26.5.571. - DOI - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources