MONTHS TO MINUTES – VIEWS OF AGING DYNAMICS ACROSS SHORTER TIMELINES

Aging is an ongoing journey from birth to death. Throughout life, we encounter aging in ourselves and others. As people become older, the relevance of aging becomes more pronounced. While aging can be viewed negatively, suggesting declines in health, social standing, or social networks, it can also be perceived positively as a sign of growth and achievement. Aging and how we view the aging process must be understood from a developmental lifespan perspective to fully capture its lifelong process.
Views of aging, which capture how we view the aging process, are potent factors in more successful aging as they predict a broad range of developmental outcomes (Westerhof et al., 2023). Given the strong connection between views of aging and developmental outcomes in later life, it is essential to gain a better understanding of the underlying drivers that cause people to, for example, feel younger or older. Additionally, we should explore the mechanisms of such factors that influence perceptions of aging beyond long-term timelines. Understanding what drives fluctuations in views of aging can increase our understanding of how people construe their views of aging and how this relates to different developmental outcomes, as well as inform future efforts to improve aging. To do this, we must examine short-term fluctuations of views of aging over more detailed timescales, such as across months, across days, and from moment to moment. As a result, a new stream of research has emerged based on the idea that aging and the formation of age identity occur within the context of everyday life.
Although short-term fluctuations in subjective age have been documented, we know far less about what conditions and contextual factors may impact these fluctuations compared to long-term fluctuations. By focusing on short-term fluctuations in views of aging, we can enhance our understanding of both within-person and between-person variations. Additionally, there is limited knowledge regarding the drivers of these short-term fluctuations. The current thesis aims to deepen our understanding of how views of aging change over shorter time periods and to examine the various contexts that are linked to these fluctuations.
I will begin this thesis by presenting views of aging and providing an overview of their conceptualizations and operationalizations. I will further explore theoretical frameworks and empirical research that illuminate how perceptions of aging can be understood from various temporal perspectives and current empirical findings. My motivation has been to explore whether we observe significant fluctuations in views of aging using various timescales. I also seek to comprehend the contexts and factors that may lead to these fluctuations. The second part of the thesis presents the empirical papers in which I aim to answer the questions I raised in the introduction.
The first manuscript will investigate views of aging across months in the context of a historical and societal event: the COVID-19 pandemic. This chapter provides insight into how major, socially shared life events can influence how people age. More specifically, we examine how older people’s perceived risks of contracting COVID-19, as well as the potential for serious illness from a COVID-19 infection, and their worries about this situation affect their views of aging. This is further seen in the context of how one experiences one’s health at a given time, and we explore how additional conditions, such as perceived health status, impact this association.
The second manuscript demonstrates how daily variations in subjective aging are influenced by the perception of health problems. People’s positive and negative perceptions of aging provide an internal context moderating this association. This study includes several measures of subjective aging to account for the multidimensional nature of subjective age.
The third manuscript examines fluctuations in views of aging within a very brief timeframe, that is, within a given day. We explore how momentary physical activity, assessed by objective sensor measurement, may lead to differences in subjective age among individuals and how particular physical conditions create an internal context that can affect this association.
In summary, this thesis provides new insights into how subjective age fluctuates over shorter timeframes, such as months, days, and moments. Additionally, it offers insights into the factors, such as health and pain, that drive these fluctuations and how these forces may be interconnected. The results are discussed in the context of existing theoretical propositions and relevant literature.