Physical exercise is associated with lower aging anxiety in older adults both directly and indirectly through a serial pathway involving self-efficacy and health anxiety, with self-efficacy showing the strongest indirect effect.
Physical exercise was significantly negatively correlated with aging anxiety among older Chinese adults.
Physical exercise was significantly positively correlated with self-efficacy and negatively correlated with health anxiety.
The total effect of physical exercise on aging anxiety was statistically significant, with the majority of the effect operating through indirect pathways.
Self-efficacy was the strongest individual mediator in the relationship between physical exercise and aging anxiety.
Health anxiety alone and the serial pathway through both self-efficacy and health anxiety each contributed significant but smaller indirect effects.
A serial mediation model was supported in which physical exercise sequentially associates with aging anxiety through first increasing self-efficacy and then decreasing health anxiety.
This research suggests that among Chinese adults aged 60 and older, doing more physical exercise is associated with lower levels of 'aging anxiety' — the worry and apprehension people feel about getting older and the losses that come with it. The study surveyed 721 older adults and found that this relationship operates both directly and through psychological pathways involving self-confidence and health-related worry. Specifically, people who exercised more tended to have higher self-efficacy (belief in their own ability to manage challenges) and lower health anxiety (worry about physical symptoms and illness), and both of these factors were in turn linked to less aging anxiety. The analysis found that more than half of the association between exercise and aging anxiety was explained by these indirect psychological pathways, with self-efficacy playing the largest role (accounting for about 30% of the total association). There was also a chain reaction: exercise appeared to boost self-efficacy, which in turn reduced health anxiety, which then reduced aging anxiety. This 'serial' pathway accounted for about 13% of the total association. This research suggests that physical exercise programs for older adults may work in part by building psychological resources like confidence and reducing health-related worry, not just through physical health improvements. The findings point to the potential value of designing exercise interventions that also target self-efficacy — for example, by helping older adults set and achieve exercise goals — as a way to better address mental health concerns like aging anxiety in an increasingly older global population.
Yu W, Ye G. (2026). Associations between physical exercise and aging anxiety among older adults: a serial statistical mediation analysis involving self-efficacy and health anxiety.. Frontiers in public health. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2026.1929542