Young at Heart

Why do we feel younger than we actually are?

- Enrique Alpañés

HER CHRONOLOGICAL AGE is 66 but her subjective age is 40. The woman I’ll call Ana did not become fully aware of this disconnect until she went for her Covid-19 vaccination a couple of years ago. As she stood in line, surrounded by her contemporaries, she looked around and thought: Are they really my age? Later, amused and slightly worried, she discussed it with her friends. Almost all of them said the same thing had happened to them.

According to a 2006 Danish study published in the Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, people over age 40 perceive themselves to be, on average, 20 per cent younger than what their ID indicates. Having a younger subjective age begins at age 25—before then, most people tend to feel older than they are.

Why do some of us feel that the number of candles on our birthday cake can’t be right? Psychologists and scientists have been studying this phenomenon since the 1970s. Some wonder about the cultural factors that push us to look younger. A 1989 study by the American Psychological Association concluded that subjective age identities are “a form of defensive denial by which adults can disassociate themselves from the stigma attached to growing old.”

Belén Alfonso (chronological age 35, subjective age 30) agrees. “We internalize negative stereotypes about old age, so we resist identifying ourselves with being an older person,” says the psychologist who specializes in gender studies. Alfonso explains that these ageist attitudes especially persecute women, who are the target of advertising that associates being active and attractive with being young. “In contrast, old age is associated with being unproductive, ill and dependent,” she says.