Why do I dread looking old?: A test of social identity theory, terror management theory, and the double standard of aging

Abstract

Outward appearance is one of the means by which age is determined, and fear of looking old may stem from fears about social identity and death. This study explored how social identity theory and terror management theory may help to explain the dread of looking old. University students from the United States, England, and Australia (N = 1,042) completed a questionnaire regarding their attitudes about aging and older adults. Results indicated that sex, age, beliefs about personal aging, and death anxiety explained 30.4% of the variance for participants' dread of looking old. Theoretical hypotheses were supported by our findings.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 90 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.