When you think about what is important to you, what springs to mind? Do you think you will still be able to reach your cherished goals when you are growing older? What people think about their own ageing, so-called self-perceptions of ageing (SPA) have been shown to predict a vast variety of outcomes such as health, well-being and even mortality (for an overview see e.g. Westerhof and Wurm
2018; Wurm et al.
2017). So far, only a few studies have examined antecedents of SPA (Bryant et al.
2016). Since the impact of SPA on health and longevity is well-evidenced, the time has now come to understand better how these self-perceptions themselves are formed. Whereas several studies pointed to the role of societally shaped age stereotypes for SPA (e.g. Levy
2003; Rothermund and Brandtstädter
2003), personal characteristics are just beginning to receive attention. Recently, some studies have started to investigate the role of personality for SPA. However, these studies mostly focused on personality traits based on the Five-Factor Model (Costa and McCrae
1992). Other aspects of personality, such as personal values, have not yet been considered despite values being potentially better suited than traits to predict cognitively based outcomes like SPA (Roccas et al.
2002). Thus, the role of personal values for SPA is still an open question and therefore addressed in the present study. The results will add to a more comprehensive understanding of the role of different aspects of personality in the context of SPA.
The role of age stereotypes for SPA
“Old people are senile and inactive”–“old people are wise and share their life experience”. These generic statements are examples of typical stereotypes of older persons. So-called age stereotypes are defined as socially shared beliefs about older people as a group as well as the process of ageing (Wurm et al.
2017). Age stereotypes have consequences for self-views: Becca Levy’s Stereotype Embodiment Theory (Levy
2009) posits that societal age stereotypes are encountered from childhood onwards (e.g. the loving grandma, the forgetful, grumpy old man) and become internalized throughout the life span. At first, societal age stereotypes impact personal age stereotypes directed at “the elderly”; then, with increasing age, these “other”-stereotypes become “self”-stereotypes when they are applied to oneself, thus turning into SPA. Finally, these SPA can develop into a self-fulfilling prophecy as people with negative SPA experience more negative outcomes with ageing (Wurm et al.
2013). Substantial research has provided both cross-sectional and longitudinal evidence for the importance of societally shaped age stereotypes for SPA. However, SPA cannot be equated with age stereotypes; self-perceptions are more strongly characterized by personal experiences, individual biographies and personality (Wurm et al.
2017).
The potential impact of values on SPA
Accumulating evidence points to meaningful longitudinal associations of personality and SPA for time periods up to 20 years, where personality traits seems to shape SPA rather than being shaped by them (Kornadt et al.
2019a). However, studies mostly focused on the “Big Five” traits of openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. For example, Rupprecht et al. (
2019) found conscientiousness to predict awareness of age-related gains longitudinally. Other studies found higher extraversion and agreeableness to predict lower perception of age-related losses (Bryant et al.
2016), whereas age-related growth was associated with higher extraversion, openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness (Shenkin et al.
2014). These results indicate that the trait-aspect of personality does contribute to SPA. Nevertheless, it is important to investigate the role of personal value priorities as well, as these two components of personality are associated with each other yet are not the same (e.g. Kandler et al.
2014); one can be open (trait) without finding openness important (value) and a person can value altruism highly without being very altruistic. Because of that, both values and traits are differentially suited for prediction of behaviour and other outcomes (Roccas et al.
2002).
Values are defined as guiding principles in people’s lives and express inherently desirable end-states that individuals try to reach. Schwartz’s well-known theory of basic human values (Schwartz
1992; Schwartz and Bilsky
1987) distinguishes four higher-order values, two of which express a focus on the self (agentic values: openness to change and self-enhancement) and two that express a focus on others (communal values: conservation and self-transcendence). The
openness to change value emphasizes independent thoughts, actions and feelings as well as curiosity and readiness for new experiences. It represents pursuit of self-interest and independence of other people. The
self-
enhancement value emphasizes the pursuit of socially acknowledged success and respect as well as dominance over others. It represents a desire for high social status. The
conservation value emphasizes self-restriction, order, preservation of the past and resistance to change. It represents how much a person believes people in general should adhere to social norms. Lastly, the
self-
transcendence value stresses a concern for the welfare of others and the world. It focuses on how a person wants to treat others and believes people and nature should be treated. It is an inherent feature of value theory that what drives behaviour and attitudes in an individual is not the absolute, but
relative importance of a single value compared to the other values (Schwartz
2012)—the more important or self-central a value is in relation to the other values, the more it relates to an outcome (Gebauer et al.
2013). Following Schwartz and Rubel (
2005), we refer to this relative importance of values as value priority.
Values serve as central criteria of evaluation of other people as well as the self and self-related issues (Schwartz
1992). Value priority directs attention to and interpretation of objective states (Schwartz et al.
2000); age is such an objective state and its evaluation and interpretation should then in part depend on the values that are most essential to a person. For example, an older person for whom openness to change is especially important might feel excited about an invitation to travel with other seniors and meet new people, whereas a person for whom conservation is most important might decline such an opportunity.
Values, age stereotypes and SPA: a domain-specific approach
So far, associations between values and perceptions of ageing have predominantly been examined on a cross-cultural, societal level. A common belief is that individualistic Western cultures have more negative age stereotypes because of their values of youth-orientation, whereas collectivistic Eastern cultures have more positive age stereotypes due to values of filial piety and respect for elders (Löckenhoff et al.
2009). Building on these findings, Zhang et al. (
2016) compared the impact of cultural versus personal values on individual age stereotypes, and found communal, “other-oriented” personal values to be significantly associated with individual age stereotypes. This suggests that values do play a role in the context of views on ageing. However, we are not aware of any study to date that examines the role of personal values for perceptions of the
own ageing process. Yet if communal personal values are associated with views of others’ ageing, we assume agentic values in particular to be related to views of one’s own age and ageing, as agentic values focus on the self and interpretation of self-related issues. Since personality traits have been shown to provide additional explanatory power beyond age stereotypes cross-sectionally (Emile et al.
2014) and longitudinally (Levy
2008), we expect personal values to predict SPA beyond the impact of age stereotypes as well.
It is well established that age stereotypes are multi-directional and domain-specific, which means that people can simultaneously hold positive and negative age stereotypes in different life domains such as family (e.g. keeper of traditions) and cognition (e.g. inevitable decline); this also applies to SPA (e.g. Kornadt and Rothermund
2015). Thus, studies should examine differential effects of predictors for different domains of SPA (Spuling et al.
2019).
In the present study, we investigated the differential effects of personal value priorities in a loss- and a gain-related domain of SPA: The gain-related domain is that of ongoing psychological development. This SPA facet represents perceptions of ageing as a time of new plans and activities, of new skills and ideas. The loss-related domain is perception of age-related social losses. This facet does not refer to actual losses of relationships with close others, but to perceptions of social status loss such as being less respected, less needed and more socially isolated and lonely. We expected that each value priority uniquely predicts gain- and loss-related SPA.
Openness to change
The openness to change value is quite strongly related to the Big Five trait openness to experience (Fischer and Boer
2015; Parks-Leduc et al.
2015) which predicts more positive global (Emile et al.
2014) and, more specifically, gain-, but not loss-related SPA in longitudinal analyses (Bryant et al.
2016; Shenkin et al.
2014). Furthermore, Schwartz (
2012) links this value to the promotion of gain-related goals as well as self-expansion and growth: A person who values new ideas and expressing the self should generally be more prone to perceiving opportunities to pursue this value even in old age or when confronted with age-related limitations.
Self-enhancement
A person valuing self-enhancement desires a high social status and strives for the respect and admiration of others. These aspects are negatively reflected in the SPA facet of ageing as associated with social losses. Ageing is often accompanied by loss of social status in certain areas: in midlife, children leave home and lead independent lives, thus no longer requiring parental care; with retirement, working life as a source for achievement and exertion of power vanishes. We assumed that a person for whom social status is relatively important would perceive these age-related changes in status as a threat to his or her cherished values. Furthermore, prioritizing self-enhancement and especially power is associated with higher worrying about self-related issues (Schwartz et al.
2000) and lower wellbeing (Sortheix and Schwartz
2017), which might also foster a loss-related view on ageing.
Conservation
Prioritizing stability, conformity and tradition implies resistance to change and a focus on preserving the past rather than looking for new experiences (Schwartz
2012). We supposed that this focus towards maintenance rather than development impedes gain-related SPA, that is, viewing ageing as a time of new plans and experiences: people who prioritize the value conservation might notice new opportunities, yet reject them.
Self-transcendence
Self-transcendence is an important component of wisdom (Curnow
1999) and has been theorized as the ultimate stage of human development and maturation, termed gerotranscendence (Tornstam
1994). As such, it can be seen as a more holistic view on life that emphasizes age-related change and development in a positive way (Tornstam
1997). The self-transcendence value is also related to the Big Five trait agreeableness (Fischer and Boer
2015; Parks-Leduc et al.
2015), which predicts lower perception of age-related losses over time (Bryant et al.
2016; Loi et al.
2015), and more perception of age-related gains in recent studies (Shenkin et al.
2014). Higher priority of self-transcendence is also associated with less worrying about the self (Schwartz et al.
2000), which could be reflected in more gain-related SPA. Therefore, we expected self-transcendence value priority to predict the perception of more age-related gains and less age-related losses at follow-up.
In short, the present study investigated these four hypotheses: