Or does feeling old due to other factors make people less interested in the sexual aspect of life?
While neuroticism was identified as a part of the psychological aging core, it was also a uniquely important subjective aging feature in the elderly MIDUS 1 subsample. This may be interpreted as neuroticism progressing unnoticed by an individual until old age when it starts to affect the perception of age. Previous studies identified that neuroticism tends to cause low emotional differentiation, anxiety, and depression in old people [28, 29].
Increasing values for the variables from the relationships category were associated with lower PsychoAge and SubjAge, thus favoring single people content with their sex life, who expected to remain sexually active in 10 years
Other personality traits rendered important for subjective age estimation in the elderly were optimism, being outgoing, and content with life in general. These results indicate that these might be top-priority features to focus on while developing policies aimed to involve the elderly in social life. Several studies have shown the importance of a social and productive lifestyle during aging [30, 31]. psychologically important and active events may protect against aging diseases, such as dementia .
After establishing which variables are important in absolute terms, we aimed to measure the models’ response to changes in their values. Using mixed-effects linear models, we explored the monotonic trends between 50 variables, PsychoAge and SubjAge predictions (Supplementary Figure 1 and Supplementary Figure 2).
Once again, neuroticism showed unique behavior. Contrary to the other big five traits, neuroticism score was associated with higher SubjAge and lower PsychoAge. More specifically, people within the same PsychoAge group could have >5 years of SubjAge difference due to differences in neuroticism score alone. This verifies our previous conjecture that neuroticism is a key marker of subjective aging and may be used as a sensitive measure of emotional states and late-life depressive symptoms.
Other big five traits also had significantly large effects on both PsychoAge and SubjAge. For example, a person with the bottom openness score would feel 7.2 years older than their PsychoAge counterpart with the top score. In the meantime, a person with the bottom openness score would be 5.3 years younger, as measured by PsychoAge, than their SubjAge counterpart with the top score. Similar tendencies could be observed for most other personality traits, thus building a strong case for SST.
Interestingly, personal opinion on when middle age starts and ends was significantly associated with higher PsychoAge but does not affect SubjAge. We hypothesize that this is an indication of “time dilation” associated with aging. As people get older, they place “middle age” higher and higher, as if their lifetime dilates, while younger participants may have stereotypes about aging and place “middle age” lower. An excellent study on the topic of perception of age stereotypes and self-perception of aging has been written by Hummert .
Among the health-related features, the distinction between internal and external health locus of control is of utmost interest. Hue wife Health locus of control is a set of personal beliefs and experiences that determine whether a person takes responsibility for their health (internal locus) or considers it to be outside of their power, fully dependent on external factors (external locus). Internal locus of control is associated with a problem-solving mindset, while external locus is tied to depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts, as well as maladaptive behaviors . We demonstrated that external locus of health control is a rare feature that demonstrated a linearly positive effect on both PsychoAge and SubjAge. It was the only feature to offer no payoff in at least one aging dimension, except for “Taking prescription medications for blood pressure”. Internal control, per contra, did not display concordant linearly negative effect on. Instead, it decreased SubjAge and decreased PsychoAge, just as most other health-related variables.
While the external locus of control was a senopositive (higher values increase age predictions) feature in both aging dimensions, some features were identified as double senonegative (higher values decrease age predictions). Is reduced libido a precondition to becoming subjectively old? Can more satisfying sex life prolong healthy longevity, or does PsychoAge simply see higher sex drive as a feature more frequently encounter in the youth? More thorough research is required to answer these questions as well as similar questions concerning other variables.