Awareness of age-related change in very different cultural-political contexts: a cross-cultural examination of aging in Burkina Faso and Germany
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...
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| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Article (Journal) |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2022
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| In: |
Frontiers in psychiatry
Year: 2022, Volume: 13, Pages: 1-11 |
| ISSN: | 1664-0640 |
| DOI: | 10.3389/fpsyt.2022.928564 |
| Online Access: | Resolving-System, kostenfrei, Volltext: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2022.928564 Verlag, kostenfrei, Volltext: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2022.928564 
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| Author Notes: | Anton Schönstein, Anna Schlomann, Hans-Werner Wahl and Till Bärnighausen |
| Summary: | 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 more losses as predicted by life span psychology; (2) to estimate the association between AARC dimensions and subjective age; and (3) to examine the association between health variables and AARC. A cross-sectional method involving a large, representative sample from rural Burkina Faso that included participants aged 40 and older (N = 3,028) and a smaller convenience sample of German respondents aged 50 years and older (N = 541) were used to address these questions. A proportional shift toward more AARC-losses was more clearly observable in the sample from Burkina Faso as compared to the German reference. In both samples, subjective age was consistently more strongly related to AARC-losses than to AARC-gains. Within the sample from Burkina Faso, differential associations of AARC-gains and AARC-losses to health variables could be shown. In conclusion, the findings support key tenets of life span psychology including that age-related gains occur even late in life and that a shift toward more losses occurs with increasing age. Also, feeling subjectively younger may indeed be more strongly guided by lowered negative aging experiences than by increased positive ones. |
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| Item Description: | Online veröffentlicht: 20. Januar 2023 Gesehen am 03.02.2023 |
| Physical Description: | Online Resource |
| ISSN: | 1664-0640 |
| DOI: | 10.3389/fpsyt.2022.928564 |