Personality and Subjective Age: Evidence from Six Samples

Subjective age is associated with health-related outcomes across adulthood. The present study examined the cross-sectional and longitudinal associations between personality traits and subjective age. Participants (N > 31,000) were from the Midlife in the United States Study (MIDUS), the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), the National Health and Aging Study (NHATS), the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study Graduate (WLSG) and Siblings (WLSS) samples, and the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA). Demographic factors, personality traits, and subjective age were assessed at baseline. Subjective age was assessed again in the MIDUS, the HRS, and the NHATS, 4 to almost 20 years later. Across the samples and a meta-analysis, higher neuroticism was related to an older subjective age, whereas higher extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness were associated with a younger subjective age. Self-rated health, physical activity, chronic conditions, and depressive symptoms partially mediated these relationships. There was little evidence that chronological age moderated these associations. Multilevel longitudinal analyses found similar associations with the intercept and weak evidence for an association with the slope in the opposite of the expected direction: Lower neuroticism and higher extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness were related to feeling relatively older over time. The present study provides replicable evidence that personality is related to subjective age. It extends existing conceptualization of subjective age as a biopsychosocial marker of aging by showing that how old or young individuals feel partly reflects personality traits.