Comparative optimism about healthy eating.

The present study investigated people's perception of their own as compared to their peers' healthy eating and related these perceptions to actual healthy eating, BMI, and subsequent healthy eating behavior. Data were collected within the framework of the longitudinal cohort study Konstanz Life Study (T1: N = 770; T2: N = 510). Our results demonstrated an optimistic bias on the group level. Specifically, people rated their own eating behavior as healthier on average than that of their average peers. This comparative optimism occurred even when actual healthy eating was unfavorable and BMI was high. However, it increased with actual healthy eating behavior. Importantly, optimistic perceptions were positively related to the intention to eat healthily and healthy eating six months later. Hence, the results suggest that an optimistic comparative view of one's own healthy eating is grounded in reality and boosts rather than deters subsequent health behavior. This implies that there might not be a need to reduce optimistic perceptions of healthy eating behavior.

Successful Aging and Subjective Aging: Toward a Framework to Research a Neglected Connection.

Research related to subjective aging, which describes how individuals perceive, interpret and evaluate their own aging, has substantially grown in the past two decades. Evidence from longitudinal studies shows that subjective aging predicts health, quality of life, and functioning in later life. However, the existing literature on successful aging has mostly neglected the role of subjective aging. This paper proposes an extended framework of successful aging linking subjective aging conceptually and empirically to Rowe and Kahn's (1997) three original key criteria of successful aging (i.e., avoiding disease and disability, maintaining high cognitive and physical function, and engagement with life). A particular focus is placed on subjective aging as an antecedent of successful aging. A review of the empirical subjective aging literature shows that subjective aging concepts consistently predict all three of Rowe and Kahn's criteria of successful aging. Mechanisms underlying these relations are discussed at three levels, namely psychological, behavioral, and physiological pathways. The proposed addition also takes into consideration the interconnections between subjective aging and successful aging throughout the lifespan and across historical time. Finally, we discuss the importance of facilitating successful aging through systematic interventions that support more positive views of aging at the individual and societal level.

Value-based motivational strategies combined with technology to encourage a lifestyle that helps to prevent dementia.

Lifestyles aimed at reducing dementia risk typically combine physical and cognitive training, nutritional adaptations, and, potentially, an augmentation in social interactions. Interventions at the population level are essential but should be complemented by individual efforts. For efficacy, lasting changes to an individual's lifestyle are needed, necessitating robust motivation and volition. Acting in accordance with one's values is assumed to be rewarding, leading to improved motivation and volition, and produces stable behaviour-outcome relationships. To this end, future preventive endeavours might first evaluate an individual's extant lifestyle, preferences, and values, including considerations of age-related changes to ensure these values remain a motivational source. Digital technology can support lifestyle goals and be targeted to support an individual's values. A digital platform could implement situation-specific, sensing-based feedback to alert users to a target situation (eg, opportunity for exercise) coupled with (smartphone-based) feedback on the extent of accomplished behavioural change to support individually set goals and facilitate their adjustment depending on whether these goals are achieved. This use of the motivational impetus of values, coupled with interpersonal techniques, such as motivational interviewing and SMART goal setting, in combination with sensor technology and just-in-time adaptive interventions, is assumed to hold high potential for dementia prevention.

A brief questionnaire on metacognition: psychometric properties.

OBJECTIVES: Existing questionnaires on personal views of one's own cognitive functioning are either unduly long, restrict their focus on memory, and/or capture complaints rather than the general status quo. A brief 9-item questionnaire was developed, assessing metacognition with two subscales covering metamemory and metaconcentration. METHODS: The questionnaire was tested in a sample of healthy women (n = 228) aged 70-93 years, during two face-to-face interviews with an interval of 6 months. RESULTS: Subscales were confirmed to have factorial validity. While objective cognitive test performance did not predict self-reported everyday functioning, metamemory and metaconcentration accounted for a substantial amount of its variance. The newly developed instrument was shown to be predominantly characterized by latent trait variance components. CONCLUSION: The presented questionnaire is advantageous for the assessment of metacognition as it is brief and easily applicable. Since metacognition is highly relevant for sustained independence in old age, the questionnaire is suitable to capture important determining factors in research on aging phenomena and processes.

Improving cognition by adherence to physical or mental exercise: a moderated mediation analysis.

BACKGROUND: The role of adherence to an intervention is examined to further understand the relationship between performing new challenging activities (either mental or physical ones) and their putative cognitive benefits. METHOD: Healthy older women (N = 229, age range: 70-93 years) took part in a six-month randomised controlled trial, covering either a physical or mental activity (three × weekly). They completed five tests, measuring episodic and working memory pre- and post-intervention. A moderated mediation model was specified to test the strength of the indirect effect of the activity mode (i.e. physical vs. mental) through adherence (i.e. time spent on course attendance) on levels of baseline cognitive performance. RESULTS: Both physical and mental activity groups performed better over time than the control group (p < 0.001). Adherence predicted cognitive performance (p = 0.011). The indirect effect of the activity mode on cognitive performance through adherence was especially seen when levels of baseline composite scores were low (p = 0.023). CONCLUSION: Older healthy women can improve episodic and working memory through spending time on a challenging physical or mental activity. Results are most promising for cognitively less fit women. Time spent on course attendance can be interpreted as an adherence indicator that makes a difference for various cognitive outcomes of the intervention.

Age Discrimination in the Context of Motivation and Healthy Aging.

Age discrimination can undermine older people's motivation to stay engaged with their lives and poses a major challenge to healthy aging. In this article, we review research on age discrimination in different life domains, including health and work. Motivation and health constitute potential antecedents as well as outcomes of age discrimination, with reduced motivation and impaired health increasing the likelihood of becoming a victim of age discrimination, but also resulting from age discrimination. Furthermore, high levels of motivation and health can also serve as buffers against the negative effects of age discrimination. Based on our literature review, we discuss possible strategies aimed at reducing age discrimination. Understanding and combating age discrimination can foster older people's motivation to participate in meaningful activities and promote healthy aging.

Using Theories of Behavior Change to Develop Interventions for Healthy Aging.

Healthy aging requires people to adopt and maintain beneficial behaviors in all stages of the life span. Supporting behavior change, including via the motivation to make and maintain those changes, is therefore important for the promotion of healthy aging. The aim of this overview is to introduce theoretical frameworks from the psychology of motivation that lend themselves to the development of effective interventions promoting behavior change conducive to healthy aging. We discuss theoretical frameworks referring to the determinants, properties, and functionality of goals aimed at behavior change, and consider the implications of the various theories for designing interventions to support healthy aging. We first consider theories that focus on beliefs and attitudes as determinants of goals, then we address theories that focus on the structure and content as important properties of goals, and, finally, we examine theories drawing on conscious and nonconscious processes underlying the functionality of these goals. We will present if-then planning and mental contrasting, as well as nudging and boosting, that is, novel strategies of behavior change that support the creation of scalable interventions for healthy aging across the life span. Against this background, new perspectives emerge for modern, state-of-the-art, and individually tailored interventions with the aim of enhancing older people's healthy living.

Correction to: The uniqueness of subjective ageing: convergent and discriminant validity.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1007/s10433-019-00529-7.].

Correction to: Views on ageing: a lifespan perspective.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1007/s10433-019-00535-9.].

The uniqueness of subjective ageing: convergent and discriminant validity.

Although a large body of research has demonstrated the predictive power of subjective ageing for several decisive developmental outcomes, there remains some controversy about whether subjective ageing truly represents a unique construct. Thus, information about the convergent and discriminant validity of different approaches to measuring subjective ageing is still critically needed. Using data from the 2014 wave of the German Ageing Survey, we examined how three established subjective ageing measures (subjective age, global attitude toward own ageing, multidimensional ageing-related cognitions) were inter-related as well as distinct from general dispositions (optimism, self-efficacy) and well-being (negative affect, depressive symptoms, self-rated health). Using correlational and multivariate regression analysis, we found that the three subjective ageing measures were significantly inter-related (r = |.09| to |.30|), and that each measure was distinct from general dispositions and well-being. The overlap with dispositional and well-being measures was lowest for subjective age and highest for global attitudes towards own ageing. The correlation between global attitudes towards own ageing and optimism was particularly striking. Despite the high convergent validity of the different dimensions of ageing cognitions, we nevertheless observed stronger associations between specific dimensions of ageing cognitions with negative affect and self-rated health. We conclude that researchers should be aware of the multidimensional nature of subjective ageing. Furthermore, subjective age appears to be a highly aggregated construct and future work is needed to clarify its correlates and reference points.

The assessment of views on ageing: a review of self-report measures and innovative extensions.

This is a review of existing self-report measures for assessing views on ageing. It provides an overview of instruments, for which basic psychometric properties are available and describes them according to the purposes for which they are suitable. Literature search resulted in the inclusion of 89 instruments which were categorised along eight dimensions. The majority of measures focus on explicit cognitions about people's own age and ageing or other (older) people. A substantial amount of tools account for the multidimensionality and multidirectionality of views on ageing, i.e. the idea that ageing is accompanied by both gains and losses in several different domains. To some extent, measures reflect that ageing is a long-term process and that views on ageing are malleable, rather than just stable traits. Cluster analysis revealed heterogeneity in instruments regarding the dimensions of Ecosystem, Balance, Stability, Dynamics, and Complexity. It becomes apparent, however, that approaches to measure views on ageing should be extended to more specifically target the implicit level as well as affective, physiological, and behavioural manifestations. Additionally, means for capturing views on ageing on the societal level and tools with a distinct time reference are needed. This is particularly important when one wants to account for the lifelong dynamics of views on ageing.

Views on ageing: a lifespan perspective.

Views on ageing (VoA) have special relevance for the ageing process by influencing health, well-being, and longevity. Although VoA form early in life, so far, most research has concentrated on how VoA affect later middle-aged and older adults. In this theoretical article, we argue that a lifespan approach is needed in order to more fully understand the origins of VoA, how they change over ontogenetic time, and how they shape development across the full breadth of the lifespan. We begin by explicitly linking VoA to fundamental principles of lifespan development. We review existing theories of VoA and discuss their respective contributions and limitations. We then outline a lifespan approach to VoA that integrates existing theories and addresses some of their limitations. We elaborate on three core propositions of a lifespan approach to VoA: (1) VoA develop as the result of a dynamic, ongoing, and complex interaction between biological-evolutionary, psychological, and social-contextual factors; however, the relative importance of different sources changes across the lifespan; (2) VoA impact development across the whole lifespan; however, different outcomes, mechanisms, and time frames need to be considered in order to describe and understand their effects; and (3) VoA are multidimensional, multidirectional, and multifunctional throughout life, but their complexity, meaning, and adaptivity change across the lifespan. We conclude with recommendations for future lifespan research on VoA.

Positive Self-perceptions of Aging Promote Healthy Eating Behavior Across the Life Span via Social-Cognitive Processes.

OBJECTIVES: Negative self-perceptions of aging (SPA) have been shown to result in lower levels of preventive behavior, health, and longevity. This study focuses on the understudied SPA effects on healthy eating across the life span. Moreover, it aims to provide longitudinal evidence of the psychological mechanisms behind this relationship. METHOD: We investigated whether SPA (T1) can predict changes in eating behavior (T3) over 1 year in 1,321 participants (T1), aged 18-92 years. The explanatory role of social-cognitive processes (T1, T2) was tested via a two-step mediation analysis with multigroup modeling for different age and education levels. RESULTS: Baseline positive SPA predicted more healthy eating at T3 (b = 0.68, SE = 0.24, p = .01), controlling for baseline eating (T1), age, education, gender, BMI, and illnesses. Self-efficacy (T1) and intention to eat healthily (T2) serially mediated this effect, indirect effect: b = 0.04, p = .02, 95% CI (0.02, 0.08). SPA had stronger effects in older and less educated participants. DISCUSSION: This study provides important insights into the mechanisms behind positive SPA fueling successful health behavior change dynamics. Fostering more positive SPA through interventions might be especially important for vulnerable groups. Addressing SPA already in younger ages might help establish health-promoting life-span dynamics.

The positive eating scale: relationship with objective health parameters and validity in Germany, the USA and India.

OBJECTIVE: The prevailing focus regarding eating behaviour is on restriction, concern, worry and pathology. In contrast, the purpose of the present studies was to focus on a positive relationship with eating in non-clinical samples from Germany, the USA and India. DESIGN: In Study 1, the Positive Eating Scale (PES) was tested and validated in a large longitudinal sample (T1: N = 772; T2: N = 510). In Study 2, the PES was tested in online samples from the USA, India and Germany (total N = 749). MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Health risk status was measured in Study 1 with objective health parameters (fasting serum glucose, triglycerides, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, blood pressure, waist circumference, BMI). RESULTS: Study 1 revealed acceptable psychometric properties of the PES, internal consistency (α = .87), as well as test-retest reliability after six months (r = .67). Importantly, a positive relationship with eating was associated with decreased health risk factors six months later. In Study 2, the structure of the PES was confirmed for German, Indian and US-American adults, suggesting validity across remarkably different eating environments. CONCLUSION: A positive relationship with eating might be a fruitful starting point for prevention and intervention programmes promoting physical and psychological health.

Self-Other Differences in Perceiving Why People Eat What They Eat.

People often view themselves more favorably than others, displaying unrealistic optimism. In the present study, we investigated whether people perceive their reasons for eating as better than those of others. Furthermore, we investigated which mechanisms of inaccuracy might underlie a possible bias when perceiving why people eat what they eat. In Study 1, 117 participants rated the social desirability of eating motives. In Study 2, 772 participants provided information on their own and others' motives for eating behavior. In Study 1, particularly desirable motives were eating because of hunger, health reasons, and liking. Particularly undesirable motives were eating to make a good impression, to comply with social norms, and to regulate negative affect. Study 2 revealed that for socially desirable motives, participants perceived their own motives to be stronger; for undesirable motives, the opposite pattern emerged, with others being attributed stronger motives. Moreover, the perception of others' emotional and social motives varied with participants' own healthy eating behavior. Since the perception of eating motives of others should be independent of one's own behavior, this pattern of results indicates a relative inaccuracy in the perception of others' eating motives. In conclusion, there is evidence for unrealistic optimism in eating motives. For social and emotional motives, this self-favoring view seems to be driven by a relatively inaccurate perception of others.

Fulfilled Emotional Outcome Expectancies Enable Successful Adoption and Maintenance of Physical Activity.

Although outcome expectancies are regarded as key determinants of health behavior change, studies on the role of their degree of fulfillment in long-term activity changes are lacking. This study investigated the impact of (un-)fulfilled outcome expectancies (OE) on (un-)successful attempts to increase physical activity, assuming that disengagement is the logical consequence of perceived futility. Participants (n = 138) of a longitudinal cohort study with three measurement waves were assigned to eight different groups according to a staging algorithm of their self-reported, 1-year-long physical activity behavior track. Stages were validated by objective changes in objective fitness, e.g., Physical Working Capacity (PWC). Social cognitive variables, self-efficacy, proximal and distal OE, and fulfillment of OE, were assessed via self-report. Discriminant analyses revealed that OE fulfillment was the predominant predictor for differentiating between successful and unsuccessful behavior change. Amongst OE, proximal OE concerning emotional rewards, in conjunction with action self-efficacy, further improved discriminatory power. OE adjustment warranting hedonic rewards appears to be a crucial mechanism as it facilitates long-term changes through interventions aimed at increasing physical activity rates. Theoretical models might benefit by including the concept of fulfilled expectations acting in terms of feedback loops between volitional and motivational processes.

Adherence to physical and mental activity interventions: coping plans as a mediator and prior adherence as a moderator.

OBJECTIVE: Adherence to behavioural intervention programmes is a necessary condition for beneficial outcomes to be achieved. This study tested whether social cognitive variables and coping plans predict adherence. DESIGN AND METHODS: Adherence was examined in a randomized controlled trial with healthy older women (age range: 70-93 years), who were randomized to a physical (N= 86) or a mental (N= 85) activity intervention. Intentions, self-efficacies, coping plans, and objectively measured adherence levels were assessed. A moderated mediation analysis evaluated the power of coping plans to translate intention into behaviour, depending on levels of prior adherence. RESULTS: Adherence to the physical activity programme (65%) was significantly lower than adherence to the mental activity programme (84%, p < .001). Intentions (ß= .22) weakly predicted adherence in the initiation period of the physical activity programme (6 weeks); pre-action self-efficacy predicted adherence in the initiation period of the mental activity programme (ß= .35). In both groups, coping plans predicted mid-period adherence (10 weeks) and long-term adherence (20 weeks), moderated by prior adherence (all ps < .01). Coping plans mediated the relationship between intentions and behaviour only in the exercise condition. CONCLUSIONS: Instructing older individuals to generate coping plans facilitated their adherence to physical and mental activity programmes. This effect was larger for participants with lower levels of prior adherence--and may have prevented them from dropping out of the programme.

Long-term adherence to a physical activity intervention: the role of telephone-assisted vs. self-administered coping plans and strategy use.

OBJECTIVE: This study investigated the role of coping plans and the use of selection, optimisation and compensation (SOC) strategies within an experimental evaluation of a 26-week physical exercise intervention. METHODS: Older women (N=86, M (age)=73.7 years) were randomly assigned to a telephone-assisted or a self-administered coping planning intervention after 6 weeks' participation in an exercise programme. The number of different coping plans formulated, exercise-specific SOC strategy use and their interaction were used to predict objectively measured long-term adherence to the intervention. RESULTS: The number of coping plans formulated (ß=0.28) and goal-pursuit strategies reported (sum score of optimisation and compensation strategies, ß=0.39) predicted adherence to the exercise programme over 20 weeks. The predictive strength of coping plans increased with decreasing numbers of goal-pursuit strategies (ß=-0.21). Women supported via telephone reported significantly more coping plans than did women in the self-administered coping planning group, F(1,80)=9.47, p=0.003. CONCLUSION: Coping plans have a buffering effect on adherence levels when use of SOC strategies is low. Older women's adherence to physical activities may be improved if they are given direct support in generating coping plans involving strategies of selection, optimisation and compensation.