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.