Do High Quality Relationships Strengthen the Benefits of a Younger Subjective Age Bias?

In contrast, these features are less apparent in lower quality relationships. For example, in a low quality relationship, Margaret might ignore opportunities to support Paul or explicitly disaffirm Paul’s self-view (e.g., by making disparaging comments about his attempts to engage in activities important for healthy aging, or reminding him that he is not getting younger). Low quality relationships are also often characterized by inconsistent or ambivalent caregiving, with individuals finding their partner both helpful and upsetting. This in turn is associated with poorer markers of cardiovascular health (e.g., higher coronary calcification, lower resting heart rate variability) (Holt-Lunstad, Uchino, Smith, & Hicks, 2007; Uchino, Smith, & Berg, 2014).

Given the importance of high quality relationships for healthy aging (Holt-Lunstad, 2018; Robles et al., 2014; Uchino et al., 2016), the benefits of a younger subjective age bias ong individuals in such relationships. Higher quality relationships can provide affirmation and validation important for realizing a younger self-view and can also provide support and companionship to offset the negative effects of stress.

In lower quality relationships, partners may fail to affirm, or may even undermine, each others’ efforts to enact behaviors and pursue goals congruent with their self-view

We posit that investigating the potential interactive role of marital relationship quality is an important next step in research on subjective age. We note that some previous research has considered the interplay between subjective age bias and marital status. One study tested whether married vs. unmarried adults differ in their subjective age, but generally found that marital status was unrelated to subjective age (Henderson, Goldsmith, & Flynnm, 1995). Importantly, another investigation tested for interaction effects between subjective age bias and marital status, fru puerto rican but did not find evidence for such effects (Stephan et al., 2014, p. 1183). This lack of evidence in favor of stronger subjective age bias effects among married individuals is consistent with the Strength and Strain Model, because marital relationships can pose both protective and enhancing factors as well as risk factors for health. Despite its potential importance, we are not aware of research that has investigated whether effects of subjective age bias depend on relationship quality. Thus, among adults in marital (or marriage-like) relationships, those in higher quality relationships should experience stronger benefits of having a younger subjective age bias.

Overview of Research

This research takes a novel approach to understanding the beneficial effects of having a younger subjective age bias by investigating whether this psychological resource (i.e., subjective age younger than one’s chronological age) interacts with interpersonal resources (i.e., relationship quality) to benefit cognitive functioning and cardiovascular health over time. More specifically, this study investigated whether the benefits of a younger subjective age bias would be stronger among individuals in high quality relationships.

We were also interested in whether these interactive effects would persist both concurrently and longitudinally. Previous research has found longitudinal benefits of subjective age bias over the span of ), thus we were interested whether interactive effects would hold over time. Similarly, research on the links between marital quality and health have also found both concurrent and longitudinal associations (Robles et al., 2014). Examining effects at two timepoints was also theoretically plausible, as the passing of time might allow the benefits of high quality relationships, and the costs of low quality relationships, to accumulate. In sum, we anticipated that there would be both longer-term (10 years) and shorter-term (0–2 years) benefits of the interactive effects of subjective age bias and relationship quality, although we did not have specific a priori predictions about whether the strength of these effects would increase or ined potential age differences in the dynamic interplay of subjective age bias and relationship quality on cognitive functioning and cardiovascular health, given that age differences have been previously examined in studies of subjective age (Stephan et al., 2012).