Self-assessments of health - What do people know that predicts their mortality?

Factors reflecting current experience-for example, number of medications us ed, poor function, negative affects, and positive affect-had stronger assoc iations with self-assessments of health (SAH) than factors related to prior events (medical history, prior smoking) in baseline data from 830 elderly retirement-community residents (mean age = 73). Participants appear to have implicit knowledge of the factors affecting their SAH: The rank order of t he beta weights relating factors to SAH was correlated with the rank order of participant ratings of the attention given to each factor when making SA H judgments. Relationships of SAH and each of the factors to five year mort ality showed that subjectively salient factors such as function and lack of energy predicted five-year mortality, reduced the relationship of SAH to m ortality, and accounted for most of the relationship of medical factors to mortality. Affective variables, however, had no relationship to mortality d espite their impact on SAH.