Subjective Age and Health Perceptions of Older Persons: Maintaining the Youthful Bias in Sickness and in Health

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Abstract
Self-reports of 250 persons fifty years of age and older confirm the increasing bias toward reporting a more youthful age as one increases in years. Optimistic perceptions of health are also maintained in older persons. Results from two subsets of this sample ( N = 48) further indicate that the youthful and optimistic bias occurs in older persons with poorer and failing health ( N = 23) as well as for persons in stable and good health ( N = 25). Given the importance of self-perceptions in quality of life and in determining survivability, and given the indication that such measures are modifiable, it is suggested that future research be aimed at identifying those self-perceptions of health and age that are most susceptible to intervention.