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 People who believe they can influence the outcomes and events in
their daily lives generally do feel a greater sense of control than
those who feel more helpless, and previous research has linked a
strong sense of control to better wellbeing, researchers note in
Journals of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences.
Past research hasn't offered a clear picture of how day-to-day
variation in people's sense of control might be tied to shifts in
how they perceive their own age and wellbeing, however.
For the current study, researchers had 116 older adults, ages 60 to
90, and 107 younger adults, ages 18 to 36, fill out daily surveys
for eight consecutive days. Researchers asked participants questions
about their daily stresses, physical health, sense of control over
their daily lives and how old they "felt."
Among younger adults, feeling in more control on any given day
didn't appear to make them feel more youthful. But they did report
feeling younger than their chronological age on days when they had
low levels of stress and few or no health complaints.
With older adults, the picture was different. They typically felt
about two to four years younger on days when they felt more in
control than usual.
"Control beliefs can function as an important resource that supports
individuals in pursuing their goals - believing that you can
accomplish a task helps you to actually get the job done," said
study co-author Jennifer Bellingtier of Friedrich Schiller
University Jena in Germany.
"In a similar manner, control could help to foster independence in
the lives of older adults," Bellingtier said by email. "I think it
is possible that when older adults feel in control of their lives
they may not feel as though their daily lives align with negative
stereotypes about growing old, thus they may report feeling younger
than their chronological age."
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When older adults feel younger than their age, it is typically
associated with better mental, physical and cognitive health, study
co-author Shevaun Neupert of North Carolina State University in
Raleigh said by email.
The study wasn't designed to test how shifts in feelings of control
might impact physical or mental health.
Beyond its small size, one limitation of the study is that it cannot
eliminate the possibility of reverse causality - that seniors might
have felt more in control on days when they woke up feeling more
youthful.
"The relationship between feeling younger and healthy aging should
be viewed as a two-way street, meaning positive feeling and good
health could reinforce each other," said Dr. Guohua Li of the
Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health in New York
City.
"Older adults who feel in control and youthful are likely to be more
physically and mentally active and more socially engaged, which
could help them continue to flourish and function on the optimal
level," Li, who wasn't involved in the study, said by email.
SOURCE: https://bit.ly/2VQgbBS Journals of Gerontology:
Psychological Sciences, online March 15, 2019.
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