What is psychological age and how to determine it: 2 simple tests

We often have an uneasy relationship with time. We fear old age and our own mortality. We work with these fears in different ways. Some rely on digital immortality. Some choose the spiritual path. Others follow the path of biohacking.

The problem of relationships with time and aging can be looked at from another angle – through the eyes of a psychologist. Let’s try to do it together with an expert.

Gestalt therapist, Psychedemia expert

“Imagine: one day it turns out that the date of birth in your passport is incorrect. They made a mistake when writing it down. It happens. And it is not known, in which direction – you added or subtracted years. How will you determine your age in this case? Most likely, by your own feelings. This will be the psychological age”.

What is psychological age?

The framework of psychological age varies greatly from generation to generation. Often, junior high school students are already behaving like teenagers (asserting their boundaries, having a broad outlook, etc.). And the older generation enjoys the prospect of a life of pleasure after retirement. Over the years, both objective indicators (norms) and subjective perceptions of one’s psychological age and their ratio change.

Under the psychological age is understood a certain level of mental development, which includes:

• mental (cognitive) maturity (IQ);
• social maturity (adaptation to the social environment);
• emotional maturity (arbitrariness of emotions, poise).

It is important to note that it is customary to distinguish many different ages: social, historical, biological, medical, pedagogical, chronological (passport) and others. In different spheres of life activity it may not coincide. That is – calendar differs from biological, social differs from psychological, etc.

Biological is all physical changes associated with age. Social determines behavior. It is about what society expects from a person at a certain biological age: achievements, position, etc.

All of this, as well as other varieties of ages, becomes the backdrop for psychological age.

People who have not had time to close their social debts (get married, have children, etc.) often feel younger than those who have already sorted out all these roles.

Psychological age is related to self-perception, which is influenced, among other things, by external reference points set by society. Studying at school, serving in the army, entering a lyceum, technical school, college, university are perceived as youth. Work after education is already mature years.

Another way to divide your life into stages is to focus on social-emotional events. For example, meeting or parting with significant people, friendship, marriage, birth of children.

Some people divide their life into cycles based on the dynamics of personal growth: at the age of five they learned to read, and at the age of 12 they wrote their first poem. It happens that self-perception is tied to geography and takes into account, for example, moving from city to city.

In each case, the main factor in determining one’s psychological age for a person is subjective perception of the events that make up life and attitude to them. Besides, it is also influenced by the state of health. Thus, younger teenagers often feel older than their years, which can lead to risky behavior, and people who faced serious illnesses at a young age often feel much older.

How do you define psychological age?

There are many definitions of psychological age, as well as periodizations of a person’s life course. Some researchers rely on calendar marks: up to 16, up to 30, up to 45, up to 65, after 75. Others resort to metaphors: youth, blossoming, “time of storm and onslaught”, maturity, retirement, decrepitude, etc.

There are several approaches that look at the definition of psychological age in different ways. Let us consider two of them as examples.

For example, Robert Kastenbaum, an American specialist in late-life psychology, suggested that its definition should take into account these four aspects:

• self-perception;
• appearance, including manner of dress;
• interests (whether there are many of them, what kind of interests they are, their orientation);
• the degree of life activity (aspiration to new things, to saturate one’s life with events).

Actually, this is the Kastenbaum test. Answer the four questions and calculate the arithmetic mean. This will be your psychological age.

1. How old do you feel you are?
2. How old do you look? How old do people around you give you?
3. What age corresponds to your interests, hobbies, interests?
4. According to what age do you behave in everyday life?

Some tests are not based on absolute values, but on the behavior of a person. One of them is the psychological age scale. It was developed by researcher Robert Heyvinghurst in the middle of the last century.

In the current version, his psychological age scale looks as follows (it takes into account the peculiarities of a person’s psyche and behavior).

1. Childhood is characterized by frustration about something not going the way one wants. A person considers his/her desires as something unconditional, tolerates restrictions badly. He does not have a developed sense of guilt. He is not ready to take responsibility for his actions. This is how infantile behavior manifests itself.

2. Parental age is named so because it is during this period we most of all internalize the attitudes of our moms and dads. The only measure of well-being is unconditional and sometimes mindless adherence to numerous rules. Such a person lives according to the principle of “must”, in everything looking for regularities, strict rules by which to build his life.

3. Adolescence is the proverbial rebellion. The teenager is emotionally unstable, guided by impulses, often acts out of spite, does not recognize authority. Independence (in his own understanding) becomes for him the main criterion of success.

4. Adult personality is characterized by acceptance of external circumstances and the ability to find himself in them. Such a person takes responsibility, is adapted to society, is able to show empathy and sympathy, but if necessary is ready to take care of himself and emotionally withdraw. He varies his behavior independently.

Often you can meet people in adulthood who behave like teenagers. But only if you look closely – teenagers are not modern, but as if stuck in the early 90s. The thing is that fixation on this or that psychological age can occur as a result of trauma. And then the personality does not grow psychologically.

For example, rebellious traits persist in the absence of a sense of gratitude and recognition of value by others. Or adults refuse to take responsibility for their lives. This is already an infantile position, when others are to blame.

Psychological maturation occurs through personal crises: reassessment of life values, revision of one’s place in society, goals, own prospects, etc.

How to become younger? And is it necessary?

So, the psychological age depends on a person’s self-perception and does not always coincide with the passport age. At the same time, it is strongly influenced by the state of health. Both physical and mental.

Does it mean that a person can determine his psychological age (as, for example, he can change the biological one if he starts to pay more attention to his health). Of course it does.

According to research by Professors Alexander Kronik and Eugene Golovakha, the number of people who consider themselves younger increases significantly with age. In the group under 30, the average underestimation of age was 3.6 years, and in the group over 30 – 8.3 years.

The peculiarity of psychological age is that it is reversible to a certain extent. This is exactly the area where we can run time backwards and open up opportunities to feel younger. But where is the line of reasonableness here?

We could say that psychological age is the point at which a person closes in development. From this moment he does not revise his value base, refuses to be oriented to what is going on around him. And, importantly, he stops taking into account his chronological age. He struggles with it.

You can “get younger”, but you should do it by accepting your age. Not to refuse to develop, to live an energetic and full life. So how to keep the balance? I suggest one more test and a task to it.

Draw a straight line. This will be your life line. It has a beginning and a presumed end. Mark on it the point where you are now. This will divide your life into past, present and future. Think of important events, positive and negative, that have happened to you.

On the part of the scale that relates to the past, place dots. The “fatter” they are, the more important the event (graduation from school, university, marriages and divorces, birth of children, etc.).

Now look at the part that relates to your future. What other events do you expect to happen in your life? What important things are going to happen to you? What is in your future plans?

Look at where there are more events: in the past or in the future? What moments can you fill your future with so that it becomes no less significant than what has already passed?

If for a person the future does not shrink every year, but, on the contrary, opens up new perspectives of development, it allows him to keep his mental youth throughout his life. But if the main thing behind, seems to be realized, then, regardless of the passport age, he becomes an old man. Think what could be a vector of development just for you?