Hans-Werner Wahl

Universität Heidelberg ·  Network on Aging Research

Objectives: The main purpose of the study has been to examine changes in Internet use among men and women in three age groups (mid-life, early old age, and advanced old age) between 2014 and 2021. We tested two hypotheses: The complementary hypothesis posits that online activities reproduce gender differences in offline activities. The compensator...

Background and Objectives Advanced old age is a life stage with a high likelihood of age-related loss experiences. However, little is known about remaining gain experiences and their relation with perceived losses and health correlates in community-dwelling very old adults. Moreover, virtually nothing is known in this regard about the experiences o...

Little is known about historical shifts in subjective age (i.e., how old individuals feel). Moving beyond the very few time-lagged cross-sectional cohort comparisons, we examined historical shifts in within-person trajectories of subjective age from midlife to advanced old age. We used cohort-comparative longitudinal data from middle-age and older...

Background: Impaired hearing is associated with disadvantages in developmental outcomes, such as compromised everyday social communication or reduced well-being. Hearing impairment might also have an impact on how individuals evaluate their own aging as deterioration in hearing can be interpreted as being age-related and as a phenomenon individual...

This article updates and extends an earlier meta-analysis (Westerhof et al., 2014) on the longitudinal effects of subjective aging (SA) on health outcomes. A systematic search in different databases (APA PsycInfo, PubMed, Web of Science, and Scopus) resulted in 99 articles, reporting on 107 studies. Participants: Studies had a median sample size of...

Background Clinical gait analysis traditionally focusses on straight line walking. But movements in daily life are various and include more challenging tasks than steady state walking, such as transfer of center of mass (COM), while standing as well as turning. So potential physical or balance impairments might stay uncovered in current clinical a...

Combining recent developments in research on personal views on aging (VoA) and a cross-country comparative approach, this study examined awareness of age-related change (AARC) in samples from rural Burkina Faso and Germany. The aims of this study were (1) to examine for an assumed proportional shift in the relationship between gains/losses toward m...

Objectives This study aims to estimate the association of the often, in daily clinical practice, used biological age-related biomarkers high-sensitivity troponin-T (hs-TnT), C reactive protein (CRP) and haemoglobin (Hb) with all-cause mortality for the purpose of older patient’s risk stratification in the emergency department (ED). Design Explorat...

Mobility has been identified as one important ingredient to older adults’ health and well-being and is considered a high priority in the global agenda of healthy and active aging. However, mobility is still a relatively understudied concept in aging research. This symposium, including three empirical studies and one concept paper, presents how diff...

This study addressed two questions: (1) Does advanced cancer in later life affect a person’s awareness of time and their subjective age? (2) Are awareness of time and subjective age associated with distress, perceived quality of life, and depression? We assessed patients with terminal cancer (OAC, n = 91) and older adults with no life-threatening d...

Longitudinal effects of subjective age on adult health and survival are well-documented (Westerhof et al., 2014). This systematic review provides an updated and expanded evaluation of the state of the field. A systematic search in PsycInfo, Web of Science, Scopus, and PubMed resulted in 103 articles: 19 articles from the 2014 meta-analysis and 84 n...

Insights into the short-term dynamics and micro-longitudinal consequences of subjective age can drive our understanding of its long-term mechanisms across adulthood. Using data from 80 newly retired individuals (aged 59 to 76 years; 59% women) collected on 21 days, we made use of a recent methodological advance—multilevel dynamic structural equatio...

Emotions influence processes of learning and thinking in all people. However, there is a lack of studies in the field of emotion research including people with intellectual disabilities (ID) addressing the existing diversity. The present study investigates the emotional competence of people with ID (N = 32). The first aim was to assess the emotiona...

Although gains and losses are an integral part of human development, the experience of change and readjustment that often comes with major life events may be particularly influential for an individual's subjective aging experience and awareness of age-related change (AARC). Thus, this study focused on the role of life events in the domains of famil...

Age simulation suits (ASS) are widely used to simulate sensory and physical restrictions that typically occur as people age. This review has two objectives: first, we synthesize the current research on ASS in terms of the observed psychological and physical effects associated with ASS. Second, we analyze indicators able to estimate the validity of...

Despite much research in the context of aging and technology, the role of Views on aging (VoA) for differences in technology use and attitudes among older adults has rarely been studied so far. This study focuses on the associations between a multidimensional measure of VoA and technology use, technology skills, and attitudes toward technology in a...

Objectives: Work is an important developmental context in adulthood, yet little is known about how it contributes to personality trajectories in midlife. The present study examines how subjectively perceived work environment (autonomy, innovation, social integration, stress) and objectively measured work activities (activities related to informati...

1. Introduction About one third of daily movements are associated with taking a turn [1]. Established geriatric fall risk assessments generally limit their focus to straight-line walking, while turning is more dynamic and thus challenging, and therefore lead to more serious injuries when falling [2]. However, there is conflicting and limited biomec...

Views of aging (VoA) are subjective evaluations of the aging process. Using a range of operationalizations, VoA have gained remarkable popularity in social-behavioral aging research, owing partly to their established associations to health-related parameters. Emerging research makes a strong attempt to tie subjective evaluations to objective biolog...

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in profound changes of individuals’ everyday lives. Restrictions in social contacts and in leisure activities and the threatening situation of a spreading virus might have resulted in compromised well-being. At the same time, the pandemic could have promoted specific aspects of psychosocial well-being, e.g., due t...

Subjective age, that is the age people feel in relation to their chronological age, can vary on a day-to-day and even momentary basis. Previous long-term and daily-diary studies have shown that elevated stress covaries with older subjective age. However, it is an open question whether such links can also be observed at the momentary level within a...

Fragestellung: Alterssimulationsanzüge (ASS) erfreuen sich zunehmend größerer Beliebtheit im Bildungssetting. Wenige Studien deuten darauf hin, dass ASS spezifische Leistungseinbußen älterer Erwachsener simulieren können. Jedoch mangelt es an klaren Studiendesigns und etablierten Messgrößen, um die Möglichkeiten, Grenzen und Validität solcher Simul...

Background: Commercial conversational agents (CAs) bear the promise of low threshold accessibility for individuals with limited digital competencies. This applies not only for healthy aging older adults but also for specific subgroups such as those with life-long intellectual disabilities (ID). Objective: This scoping review aims to synthesize the...

Background Wearables provide new opportunities to promote physical activity also among older adults but data on effectiveness and user friendliness are rare. Objective The effects of a comprehensive self-regulative intervention on moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA) and number of steps were examined using commercially available activity...

Background. Wearables provide new opportunities to promote physical activity also among older adults, but data on effectiveness and usability is rare. Objectives. (1) To examine effects of a comprehensive intervention using commercially available activity trackers on moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) and steps; (2) to analyze acceptan...

Awareness of Age-Related Change (AARC) describes to what extent people become aware of changes which they attribute to getting older. So far little is known regarding how different AARC dimensions change over time, to what extent these changes in different domains of AARC gains and losses are interrelated, and which predictors account for inter-ind...

This study examined trajectories of awareness of age-related change (AARC; Diehl & Wahl, 2010) across 2 years in a large representative sample of very old adults. We also examined the predictive role of health, functional status, cognitive functioning, and engagement with life for AARC change. The initial sample comprised 1,863 individuals aged 80...

Pain is common in very old age and in the last years prior to death. However, little is known regarding longitudinal trajectories of pain in very old age and at the end of life. Moreover, whereas medical and morbidity-related factors contributing to pain are established, the role of psychosocial factors, such as eudaimonic wellbeing or personality...

Feeling younger than one's age reflects a process of age-group dissociation that is frequently activated when belonging to one's age group has negative connotations. Regarding the Corona pandemic, time periods with a higher number of individuals infected with coronavirus disease (COVID-19) might have elicited younger subjective ages, particularly a...

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic might have affected older adults' personal and general views on aging (VoA) because they were frequently, particularly during the early phase of the pandemic, portrayed as a homogeneous, vulnerable group in the media and in public debates. Also, their higher risk of severe COVID-19 disease progression as...

Pain is common in very old age and in the last years prior to death. However, little is known regarding longitudinal trajectories of pain in very old age and at the end of life. Moreover, whereas medical and morbidity-related factors contributing to pain are established, the role of psychosocial factors, such as eudaimonic wellbeing or personality...

Unlabelled: Higher awareness of positive age-related changes (AARC gains) is related to better mental health, whereas higher awareness of negative age-related changes (AARC losses) is related to poorer mental and physical health. So far perceived gains and losses have been explored separately, but people report gains and losses concurrently in var...

Over the last decades, educational programs involving age simulation suits (ASS) emerged with the ambition to further the understanding of age-related loss experiences, enhance empathy and reduce negative attitudes toward older adults in healthcare settings and in younger age groups at large. However, the impact of such “instant aging” intervention...

Advanced old age has been characterized as a biologically highly vulnerable life phase. Biological, morbidity-, and cognitive impairment-related factors play an important role as mortality predictors among very old adults. However, it is largely unknown whether previous findings confirming the role of different wellbeing domains for mortality trans...

Healthy aging is informed by theoretical developments within gerontology, the accumulation of biopsychosocial data on health and well-being in later life, and the perspectives of older persons themselves. This article reviews this progress, consolidates recent advances with respect to proximal and distal influences, as well as risk and protective f...

Over the past decade, many studies have reported individual differences in negative emotional reactions to daily stressful events. However, whether and how individual and age-related differences in emotional reactivity also depend on the temporal characteristics of stressors has received little attention. In this project, we focused on the temporal...

Objectives We addressed two questions: (1) Does advanced cancer in later life affect a person’s awareness of time and their subjective age? (2) Are awareness of time and subjective age associated with distress, perceived quality of life, and depression? Methods We assessed patients suffering terminal cancer (OAC, n = 91) and older adults free of a...

Research exploring whether health predicts self-perceptions of aging (SPA) has mostly focused on single predictors and has been hampered by short observational intervals. We examined whether 20-year changes in cognitive functioning, physical and mental health predict SPA. We used data of 103 German participants who remained of a sample of 500 parti...

Old age is a developmental phase in which physical vulnerability increases and discrete affective states are uniquely important. The current project combines data from four studies (total N = 476 participants) to investigate within-person fluctuations in salivary cortisol (a marker of physiological arousal), seven discrete affective states, and the...

Across the lifespan, individuals adapt to change through the careful monitoring and adjustment of goals, demands, and performance—processes of self-regulation. Technology in support of self-regulatory processes may compensate for deficiencies in the ability to set, monitor, and work toward goals. Our purpose in this symposium is to forward the disc...

Lifespan theories and lab-based research both suggest that the ability to downregulate negative emotions is often well preserved into old age, but becomes increasingly fragile in very old age. However, little is known about factors that may alleviate such age differences. Here, we ask whether exposure to daily stressors helps very old adults to mai...

To examine historical changes in views on aging, we compared matched cohorts of older adults within two independent studies that assessed differences across a two-decade interval, the Berlin Aging Studies (BASE, 1990/93 vs. 2017/18, each n = 256, Mage = 77) and the Midlife in the United States Study (MIDUS, 1995/96 vs. 2013/14, each n = 848, Mage =...

Multiple-time scale studies provide new opportunities to examine how developmental processes evolving on different cadences are intertwined. Theories about age-related accumulation of stress suggest that long-term progressive loss of cognitive resources should manifest in and shape short-term daily affective experiences. Applying growth modeling an...

Views on aging (VoA) such as attitudes toward own aging, awareness of aging or subjective age, have a large impact on outcomes related to positive development in later life. Recent research in this domain has focused on complex research designs and inter-systemic linkages at different levels. Indicators of short-term variability of VoA have increas...

We investigated the reciprocal longitudinal relation between perceived stress and three established domains of views on aging (VoA): (1) subjective age; (2) attitude toward own aging [ATOA]; and (3) aging-related cognitions including social loss, physical decline, and continuous growth. We also examined the potentially moderating role of chronologi...

We examined short-term fluctuations of subjective age with data obtained from 123 young-old (Mage = 67.19 years) and 47 old-old adults (Mage = 86.59 years) who reported their momentary subjective age six times a day over seven consecutive days as they were going about their everyday lives. Participants felt younger on a large majority of occasions,...

A large body of empirical evidence has accumulated showing that the experience of old age is "younger," more "agentic," and "happier" than ever before. However, it is not yet known whether historical improvements in well-being, control beliefs, cognitive functioning, and other outcomes generalize to individuals' views on their own aging process. To...

Most theoretical models on social dynamics governing development and health across adulthood and old age rely on a “single-unit” approach. We put forth a developmental–contextual model (CoSynch) that utilizes the concept of synchrony (interdependent fluctuations in physiological states and health behaviors) as a novel way to conceptualize social de...

Objectives To estimate the association of the routinely applied biological age-related biomarkers hs-TnT, CRP and Hemoglobin (Hb) with mortality for the purpose of older patient's risk stratification in the emergency department (ED). Design Exploratory, prospective cohort study with a follow-up at 2.5 years after recruitment start. Setting and pa...

Existing theories of aging suggest that there may be similarities and differences in how COVID-19 impacts older people’s psychosocial adaptation compared to younger age groups, particularly middle-aged individuals. To assess the degree to which these impacts vary, we analyzed data from 3098 participants between the ages of 40 and 79 from an online...

Ältere Menschen gehören zu den Gruppen, die von der Covid-19-Pandemie besonders schwer betroffen waren und sind. Der Grund dafür besteht zunächst in einer statistischen Korrelation: Bereits zu Beginn der Pandemie zeigte sich, dass die Risiken für einen schweren oder tödlichen Verlauf von Covid-19 mit dem chronologischen Alter ansteigen (Grasselli e...

The major task of this closing chapter is to strive for reconciliation between the very divergent positions and perspectives on successful ageing that have been outlined in this book. The building blocks enabling at least partial reconciliation are the emphasis of the need for pluralism in conceptual reasoning on the notion of successful ageing; th...

In this chapter the authors argue that physical, spatial, and technological environments are relevant to successful ageing both in a conceptual and in a practical sense. Conceptually, efforts towards ageing successfully cannot be discussed separately from the various external forces that serve as constraining or enhancing influences in this respect...

Biological ageing is a progressive decline in physiological functionality, and an increase in the chances of chronic diseases and death. Ageing of the body sets in and happens progressively, exponentially and intrinsically in the period beyond the naturally evolved essential lifespan of a species. Ageing science has searched for the factors securin...

Individual strategies are necessary for successful ageing. Three of the models discussed in the previous chapter—the pragmatic, hedonic, and eudaimonic models—put particular emphasis on individuals’ striving to reach their desired endpoints: to be fit, autonomous and engaged; to be happy; or to be wise, respectively. Nevertheless, the primary respo...

Social bonds and care are important factors for successful ageing. Most people do not grow old in isolation, but together with other people, supporting them and being supported by them. While ageing, people are embedded into a social network formed by family, friends, and neighbours. These social bonds are a necessary precondition for successful se...

Social inequality is one of the major challenges for successful ageing, and the welfare state may alleviate some of the unjust and unfair allocations of resources within a population. Socio-economic differences between individuals permeate life courses from conception to death. The concept of ‘inequality’ points to vertical differences between indi...

The authors propose a taxonomy of successful ageing conceptions organized according to five selected models of successful ageing used in ageing research. The models are rooted—explicitly or implicitly—in philosophical traditions describing a good life. The dominant model in gerontological research, Rowe and Kahn’s model of successful ageing, follow...

The notion of successful ageing has been one of the most successful but also one of the most controversial concepts of ageing research over the last 60 years. Attempts to uncover the secret of successful ageing have often resembled something like a quest for the Golden Fleece. And that quest continues within contemporary gerontology—so far with no...

As older adults have frequently been portrayed as one homogeneous and vulnerable risk group in public debates and in the media immediately after the outbreak of the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, a general shift toward less favorable attitude toward own aging (ATOA) might have resulted. In contrast, individuals may feel younger than befor...

Objectives This article considers how individuals’ motivation for healthy aging manifests within the myriad of different contexts that older adults are embedded in as they move through later life. Methods Drawing on the concept of co-construction, we argue that persons and contexts both contribute to the emergence, maintenance, and disengagement f...

Views on aging (VoA) are meaningful predictors of well-being, health, cognitive impairment, and mortality. One underlying pathway could be that negative VoA promote perceived stress. However, little is known about the role of stress perceptions as an antecedent of personal VoA. In this study, we therefore investigated the longitudinal reciprocal as...

Although research on the association between subjective views of aging (VOA) and survival is scarce, more negative VOA have been found to be associated with increased all-cause mortality, even after controlling for possible confounders. Longitudinal studies on the predictive association of VOA with survival in individuals aged 80 years or older are...

Objective: Previous research on subjective age (SA), that is, how young or old a person feels relative to their chronological age, has shown that older adults tend to feel younger than they are (by about 15-20%), but the extent of this effect depends, in part, on their health. However, as most of the studies have been conducted in Western countrie...

Higher awareness of positive age-related changes (AARC gains) is related to better mental health, whereas higher awareness of negative age-related changes (AARC losses) is related to poorer mental and physical health. So far perceived gains and losses have been explored separately, but people report gains and losses concurrently in varying degrees,...

Research on time-fluctuating links between positive affect and cortisol is inconsistent and mostly based on young to middle-aged samples. The current project investigated how moment-to-moment changes in positive and negative affect are associated with moment-to-moment changes in cortisol levels in older adults’ daily lives and whether those associa...

Although stress is a risk factor for various diseases in later life, its role for sensory abilities in the second half of life has rarely been empirically addressed. We examined if perceived stress at baseline predicts self-reported difficulties with vision and hearing 3 years later. We also explored whether chronological age is a moderator of asso...

Objectives: Understanding why older adults (including those in very old age) use or do not use the Internet can build on the technology acceptance model (TAM). In this cross-sectional study, we translate the TAM to the Internet and assume that perceived usefulness of the Internet (PUI) and perceived ease of use of the Internet (PEUI) will be revea...

Es ist das Ziel dieses Kapitels, schwerwiegende Sehverluste im höheren Alter aus einem primär gerontologischen Blickwinkel zu betrachten. Dabei verstehen wir Gerontologie als das Gesamt an wissenschaftlichen Bestrebungen, Alternsprozesse zu beschreiben, zu erklären und auch zu verändern. Aus der Vielzahl an notwendigen Disziplinen, die zu einem sol...

Objectives Although the evidence linking Views on Aging (VoA) with aging outcomes is robust, little is known about how different types of VoA may interact to influence such outcomes. Therefore, this study examined two types of VoA, Age Stereotypes (AS), representing general VoA, and Self-Perceptions of Aging (SPA), representing personal VoA. We ope...

Subjective age, how old people feel compared to their chronological age, is a central indicator of age identity and highly predictive for developmental outcomes. While mostly used as a trait-like concept in previous research, recent studies employing experimental designs and daily assessments suggest that subjective age can vary after experimental...

Objectives Evidence linking subjective concerns about cognition with poorer objective cognitive performance is limited by reliance on unidimensional measures of self-perceptions of aging (SPA). We used the awareness of age-related change (AARC) construct to assess self-perception of both positive and negative age-related changes (AARC gains and los...

The present meta-analysis analyzed how the gap between subjective age and chronological age changes across the life-span and whether the size of this gap varies across regions of the globe. In addition, we tested for sources of the national differences. A systematic search in electronic databases (PsycInfo, Medline, Google Scholar, PSYNDEX) and cro...