Older people feel more youthful when they also feel in control: Study

Among younger adults, feeling in more control on any given day didn't appear to make them feel more youthful

Older adults may feel younger than their age on days when they feel most in control of their lives, a small study suggests.

People who believe they can influence the outcomes and events in their daily lives generally do feel a greater sense of control than those who feel more helpless, and previous research has linked a strong sense of control to better wellbeing, researchers note in Journals of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences.

Past research hasn’t offered a clear picture of how day-to-day variation in people’s sense of control might be tied to shifts in how they perceive their own age and wellbeing,