Perceptions of age-identity: A cross-cultural inner-age exploration

This article presents an exploratory and comparative study of the nature of cognitive and desired age perceptions among 20-59-year-old men and women in three East Asian societies: India, Korea, and China. Research questions were posed about the role of gender and self-identification with being either "young" or "middle-aged." The data indicate that gender plays no significant role in age perception in the three nations surveyed. The great majority of respondents under 40 considered themselves young and rejected a middle-age role for themselves irrespective of their domicile. Also, young self-identifiers' chronological and subjective ages were younger than those of middle-age identifiers. These findings were surprisingly similar to those found in "ageless" American society. (C) 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.