Daily Ageism, Subjective Age, and Memory Failures: A Multi-Country Integrated Data Analysis

Abstract

Memory functioning is central to everyday life, yet memory failures, such as forgetting names, words, or medications, are common daily experiences, particularly in later adulthood. How often individuals experience these memory failures may depend on their general and personal views of aging. General views include expectations for older adults (ageist attitudes), whereas personal views can include age-based experiences of discrimination (ageist experiences) and subjective age. Leveraging 14-day daily diary data from 974 participants (aged 50–94 years) who reported on a total of 12,261 days from the United States, Canada, Germany, Austria, Ukraine, India, China, Israel, and Türkiye (Study 1), and momentary data across 14 days with 7 assessments per day from 111 participants (aged 65–91 years) from Switzerland (Study 2), the current studies examined within-person fluctuations in daily ageism and daily subjective age and their links to everyday self-reported memory failures. Preregistered analyses tested between- and within-person effects of subjective age and ageism (ageist attitudes in Study 1, ageist experiences in Study 2) in predicting daily memory failures. Study 1 results indicate that within- and between-person ageist attitudes were positively associated with daily memory failures, but subjective age was not. Study 2 results from the Swiss data revealed no significant associations. These results suggest that endorsing expectations for older adults may be more powerful than personal views of aging in predicting daily memory failures.

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