Average Mental Age by Real Age: Honest Estimates, Not Data

A common question after the quiz is: what is the average mental age for someone my age? I would love to give you a real chart. I can't yet, and I would rather say so plainly than invent one.

The honest situation: there is no standard, published average of mental age by age for adults. The term came from testing children, and psychologists mostly dropped it for adults. This site collects optional scores, but only the final number and never your real age, and there are not enough of them yet for a real average to mean anything. So everything below is an editorial estimate, not data.

Estimated ranges by real age

These are my own estimates of the mental-age range you might expect at each real age, based on how the quiz is scored. They are not collected results and not a research finding.

Editorial estimate, last reviewed 23 October 2026. The same table, with the reasoning for each row, is on the averages page.

How I came up with them

I read the 100 questions and their four answer options, each tied to an age value, and asked which options people at different life stages tend to pick. Younger people have fewer routines and responsibilities to report, so spontaneous options are chosen more. People in their thirties and forties more often have steady jobs, money to manage and bodies that complain, so settled options are chosen more. That is reasoning, not a survey. No research body has validated it.

Why the ranges are wide

Two people of the same age can land far apart. A 19-year-old with a strict routine can score higher than a 40-year-old who still stays up for sunrise on a whim. Early responsibility, a tired day or a few body questions can each move a result by several points, so please treat any range as a rough guide, and a number outside it as perfectly normal.

What research does say

For adults, researchers study subjective age, meaning how old people say they feel. One well-known 2006 study by Rubin and Berntsen found that adults over forty tend to feel noticeably younger than their actual age, by around 20 percent on average. That is a different thing from this quiz's number, which averages everyday habits, but it is a useful reminder that feeling younger than your birthday is very ordinary.

When there will be real numbers

Once enough readers have chosen to add their score, the averages page will show a real overall average and the sample size behind it. Because only the final number is collected, it will cover everyone together, not individual age groups, unless that changes and this page says so.

In the meantime, you can take the test, then read what your mental age means and why it rarely matches your real age.

Sources and further reading

• Rubin, D. C. and Berntsen, D. (2006). People over forty feel 20% younger than their age: Subjective age across the lifespan. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 13, 776–780.
• Binet, A. and Simon, T. (1905, 1908); Stern, W. (1912); Terman, L. (1916): the origin of “mental age” as a children's measure. See What is mental age?
• The estimate table itself is this site's own editorial reasoning, explained on the averages page. It is not drawn from any of the sources above.

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