What Is Your Mental Age? Take This 5-Minute Test To Find Out

Mental age is "a person's mental ability expressed as the age at which an average person reaches the same ability," per the Oxford dictionary.

In terms of the research1 and science behind it, mental age is most often used when assessing young children with developmental disorders, such as Down syndrome or autism, whose mental age may not align with how old they actually are.

As psychotherapist Annette Nuñez, Ph.D., LMFT, tells mbg, she equates mental age with things like executive function, emotional development, and overall maturity. These things, she says, usually come to us with time as we get older, but for some people, they may feel, act, or think in ways that indicate a younger mental age.

According to clinical psychologist Carla Marie Manly, Ph.D., what we consider maturity "is generally defined as the ability to wisely and appropriately manage developmental responsibilities in mental, emotional, behavioral, and social arenas," as well as other forms of maturity like physical maturity, developmental stage maturity, and career maturity.

As aforementioned, much of the research on mental age is to assess children's abilities relative to the age they actually are. As psychology and brain research took off in the early 1900s, studies began looking into where children ought to be developmentally by certain ages (for example, being able to read by the age of 6).

Since then, much of the research has stayed in the realm of studying children with developmental disorders. But as interest in longevity grows, so, too, does research into the aging brain.

"While there's no test you can take at home to definitively say how 'old' or 'young' your brain is, we can think of a young and healthy brain as being at peak function," brain researcher Marc Milstein, Ph.D., writes in his book The Age-Proof Brain.

In terms of the general population, finding out your mental age is more about how you feel and behave than any real diagnostic measures.

Most of the quizzes you'll find online (ours included) are asking questions to get a sense of the age you think or feel you are, and they aren't going to give you the same information you might learn from a brain scan, for example.

According to Nuñez, some people are simply old souls, while others have a more youthful spirit, and there's nothing wrong with that. "As long as you're living your life to the fullest and being your authentic self, that's what matters," she says.

If you're unhappy that your mental age is younger than you actually are, Nuñez notes that an older mental age will come with more experience and emotional development. You can't expect to learn anything new, or change at all, if you don't get out of your comfort zone, so consider starting there.

There are also plenty of books and online resources about emotional intelligence (EQ), maturity, and personal growth, such as our guide to improving EQ.

A lot of factors can make someone's mental age older than they actually are. For one thing, you may have just always been an old soul since you were young, or certain experiences may have caused you to mature faster than you would have liked. Health factors can also influence an aging brain, making it (and subsequently you) age more quickly, which will certainly influence how you think and feel.

In general, minding your health (especially brain health) is sure to make you feel younger. There are brain exercises you can do as you age to keep the mind sharp, for example. Milstein also recommends brain-healthy habits like walking with friends (which research2 says can help ward off dementia, BTW), getting enough exercise, eating a nutritious diet, and getting adequate rest.

Additionally, whether our mental age is young or old, we should always strive to keep learning for the sake of our brains and personal development. As Milstein writes in his book, "Think of your brain like a bank account; the more deposits we make, the less our net worth is affected by withdrawals. We make deposits (new connections) by learning new things; as we age and naturally lose some of those connections, there are simply more remaining."