Given prior work (Stephan et al., 2014; Westerhof et al., 2014), we hypothesized that feeling younger would be associated with markers of better cognitive and cardiovascular health, namely better memory performance and lower resting heart rate variability. Moreover, we hypothesized that these benefits would depend on relationship quality, such that a younger subjective age bias would be more strongly linked to better cognitive and cardiovascular health among adults in higher quality relationships.
Potential Implications for Cognitive Health.
First, we were interested in potential interactive effects on cognitive health, specifically memory performance. Memory performance has been examined in numerous studies of subjective age bias (e.g., Stephan et al., 2016), as well as in other studies of aging perceptions and attitudes. Memory performance is important for healthy aging given that it normatively declines with age and is a domain in which older adults face negative stereotypes. Although relationship quality has not, to our thai kvinnor knowledge, been previously linked to memory declines with age, it could work interactively with a younger subjective age bias in this domain. Continue reading…