Youthfuls, Matures, and Veterans: Subtyping Subjective Age in Late-Career Employees

• Published in: Work, aging and retirement aging and retirement, 2019-11, Vol.5 (4), p.307-322
• Main Authors: Nagy, Noemi, Fasbender, Ulrike, North, Michael S
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 2054-4642; 2054-4650
• DOI: 10.1093/workar/waz015

Subjective age research is on the rise, and the term has become an overarching way of describing how individuals idiosyncratically experience the aging process (“How old one feels”). Furthermore, the theory of aged heterogeneity posits that interindividual variability of similarly aged adults increases over time, suggesting that subjective age may become more variable in later life. Subjective aging has usually been investigated in a variable-centered manner—which over-assumes homogeneity among people’s aging experience—producing mixed evidence regarding the utility of single subjective age constructs in different populations. Person-centered approaches, in contrast, acknowledge interindividual heterogeneity in the aging experience, providing an alternative angle of investigation, and enable insights into how variables operate conjointly within persons. Therefore, the current research uses a latent profile analysis to investigate various conceptualizations of subjective age among late-career employees. Using a time-lagged design with a sample of 229 older workers (aged 50–66 years), we uncover three distinct subjective age profiles: Youthfuls, Matures, and Veterans. Moreover, we investigate how person-related correlates of subjective aging differ between the uncovered profiles, and how, in turn, these profiles are related to work engagement and organizational citizenship behavior. Through a person-centered approach, we receive valuable insights on the concurrent interplay of various subjective age concepts in a highly heterogeneous population and provide a better understanding of subjective age in late career.