SUBJECTIVE AGING RESEARCH AND THE CONSTRUCT OF AWARENESS OF AGE-RELATED CHANGE

摘要

How do adults perceive their own aging? And do these self-perceptions matter? Motivated by these questions, Diehl and Wahl (2010) proposed the construct of Awareness of Age-Related Change (AARC) as an extension of existing research on subjective aging. Our major goals with the AARC research program have been to deepen the understanding of individuals’ self-perceptions and self-reflections on aging theoretically and empirically by linking adults’ AARC with developmental outcomes, and by exploring the plasticity of AARC. We present the theoretical foundation of this fairly new construct and argue that AARC represents a key feature of the aging self. We describe AARC measurement approaches and provide evidence of the multi-dimensionality of the construct. We also review existing AARC-based studies and discuss the contributions that these studies have made, in particular, with regard to predicting developmental outcomes. New findings on AARC-related interventions will round out the presentation.