Workers' perceptions of discrepancies between chronological age and personal age: you're only as old as you feel.

ABSTRACT

A large manufacturing organization was surveyed to determine whether workers perceive discrepancies between their chronological ages and the ages they "feel" themselves to be. A substantial proportion (61.5%) of the sample did report such discrepancies. Feeling "younger than one's years" was reported significantly more frequently than feeling "older than one's years"; the mean magnitude of discrepancies was 5.6 years. However, age of respondent affected both the magnitude and the direction of perceived discrepancies. Younger respondents were more likely to perceive themselves as older than their chronological ages, and older respondents were more likely to report that they felt themselves to be younger than their chronological ages. The implications of these observations for the understanding and measurement of subjective age and other age-related variables is discussed.