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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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| Maintaining self-rated health through social comparison in old age | | Author(s) | Sheung-Tak Cheng, Helene Fung, Alfred Chan |
| Journal title | Journals of Gerontology: Series B, Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, vol 62B, no 5, September 2007 |
| Pages | pp P277-P285 |
| Source | http://www.geron.org |
| Keywords | Health [elderly] ; Social characteristics [elderly] ; Age groups [elderly] ; Middle aged ; Young adults [20-25] ; Longitudinal surveys ; Hong Kong. |
| Annotation | When self-rated health (SRH) is under threat, people use self-enhancement through social comparison to buffer against the threat. Because SRH is under greater threat among older than younger adults, the benefit of social comparison on SRI may be greater for them. To test this, Study 1 examined ratings of physical attributes for self and "someone of the same age" with 392 Hong Kong Chinese across young, middle and old age. Findings suggest that perceiving one's physical self as better than others produced a larger gain to self-rated health in older than younger people. Study 2 showed longitudinally that, among older people, an increase in physical symptoms over time was associated with worsening SRH, which was then positively associated with physical self-enhancement. This improved physical self in turn partially recovered the damage to SRH. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-080306206 A |
| Classmark | CC: F: BB: SE: SD6: 3J: 7DR |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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