JENA, Germany, Jan. 7 (UPI) -- A person's perceived age varies depending on the age of the people one is seen with, German researchers say.
Psychologists at Jena University found that when people see a mature man with a woman half his age, they estimate him to be much older than he really is because of the obvious gap, The Daily Telegraph reported Friday.
In the same way, anyone who wants to look younger should try to be seen with older colleagues, friends or family, the researchers say.
They carried out a study to see how people estimate the age of others. They found that those in the study were fairly good as estimating someone's age if they saw them alone or in a group in which everyone was about the same age.
But if most of a group was old and one person was young, that difference was exaggerated and those trying to guess the individual's age were "consistently wrong," the researchers said.
The guesses ranged but most estimated the age as "substantially younger" than the reality.
The age and gender of the person doing the guessing did not make any difference, the researchers said.
