Characteristics and psychological correlates of young adult men's and women's subjective age

This research examined young adult men's and women's subjective perceptions of their age along several dimensions including how old they felt, looked, acted, desired to be, and thought they were regarded by others. The relationship between young adults' subjective age identities and other perceptions of the self were also examined. It was found that both men and women felt and believed that they acted and were regarded by others as older than their chronological age. On the other hand, same age identities were maintained along other age dimensions. Results also indicated that how old men and women thought they were regarded by others was strongly linked to how dominant, affiliative, confident, and socially potent they viewed themselves. Results are discussed within a life-span developmental framework which calls attention to the need for assessing the components and implications of younger as well as older adults' subjective age.Portions of this paper were presented at the 95th annual meeting of the American Psychological Association, New York, NY, August, 1987. This research was conducted when the author was a post-doctoral fellow supported by a NIMH post-doctoral training grant (#RERC 5-T32-MH17058) awarded to the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women. Thanks are extended to Jennifer Fleet who helped in the coding and analysis of the data. Correspondence regarding this research may be addressed to: Joann M. Montepare, Department of Psychology, Tufts University, Medford, MA 02155.