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BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article

Front. Psychol.
Sec. Psychology of Aging
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1437232

Personal views of aging in midlife and older age: the role of personality

Provisionally accepted
Elena Carbone Elena Carbone *Enrico Sella Enrico Sella Diletta Signori Diletta Signori Erika Borella Erika Borella
  • Department of General Psychology, School of Psychology, University of Padua, Padua, Italy

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Introduction: Personal views of aging (VoA) reflect individuals' perceptions, attitudes, and expectations regarding their aging selves. The present cross-sectional study was aimed at examining whether personality traits, as defined by the Big Five model, are associated with different VoA concepts related to both subjective age and awareness of age-related gains and losses in midlife and older age. Materials and methods: A sample of 224 participants aged 46 to 85 years reported their felt age and completed the Awareness of Age-Related Change (AARC) questionnaire, assessing perceptions of age-related gains (AARC-Gains) and losses (AARC-Losses) in various functioning domains, as well as the short version of the Big Five Inventory. Results: Linear regression models showed that Openness contributed to explain youthful subjective age. Extraversion explained higher AARC-Gains scores, whereas Emotional Stability, along with younger chronological age and perceiving better self-rated health, contributed to explaining lower AARC-Losses scores. Discussion: These findings confirm the relationship between personality traits and personal VoA. They further suggest that such an association varies depending on the VoA measure considered. They underscore the importance of considering personality among those individual characteristics capable of shaping personal VoA, with implications for the development of tailored interventions and the understanding of the underlying mechanisms linking personal VoA to health and longevity outcomes in midlife and older age.

    Keywords: Views of aging, Subjective age, Awareness of age-related change, personality traits, adulthood and olde age

    Received: 23 May 2024; Accepted: 23 Sep 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Carbone, Sella, Signori and Borella. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Elena Carbone, Department of General Psychology, School of Psychology, University of Padua, Padua, Italy

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.