SADIE – Subjective Age in Daily Life

The project aims at exploring developmental processes in late midlife, through the concept of Subjective Age (How old people feel in relation to their chronological age) and its relation to variables indicative of aging well. As subjective age is related to several developmental outcomes such as health, functioning, and well-being, gaining an increased insight in the mechanisms related to how old people feel will allow us to better understand what promotes and obstructs healthy aging and well-being in order to work towards a good quality of life in the second half of life. The study has two main goals: 1) To better understand Subjective Age as both a trait and as a state concept. We will examine how the well-established Subjective Age trait is related to the less studied Subjective Age state. Trait Subjective Age is proved to be stable, and beneficial when lower than ones’ chronological age. There are some studies indicating that a bigger variation in state Subjective Age is also adaptive, but these tendencies need to be further examined and understood. 2)To explore what influences Subjective Age and what are the outcomes of Subjective Age. Specifically, this involves an examination of how people’s physiological reactivity, physical activity, their personality, mood and the context in which they find themselves, affect their Subjective Age and are affected vice versa. The methodology of the study focuses on experience sampling, i.e., measuring in-the-moment experiences of the constructs as the participants experience them in their daily lives. These experiences will be measured on multiple levels: physical (heart rate variability, measured by a mobile sensor which will be worn over the course of one week), behavioural (physical activity, also measured by the sensor and additional questions) and psychological (how the participant feels, their cognitions, assessed by questions participants answer over the course of the day on tablet computers).