For clarity of interpretation, values were reverse scored, such that higher numbers correspond to higher relationship quality
Given prior work (Stephan et al., 2014; Westerhof et al., 2014), we hypothesized that feeling younger would be associated with markers of better cognitive and cardiovascular health, namely better memory performance and lower resting heart rate variability. Moreover, we hypothesized that these benefits would depend on relationship quality, such that a younger subjective age bias would be more strongly linked to better cognitive and cardiovascular health among adults in higher quality relationships.
Potential Implications for Cognitive Health.
First, we were interested in potential interactive effects on cognitive health, specifically memory performance.