
People’s beliefs about aging have a profound impact on their health, influencing everything from their memory and sensory perceptions to how well they walk, how fully they recover from disabling illness, and how long they live.
When aging is seen as a negative experience, individuals tend to experience more stress in later life and engage less often in healthy behaviors such as exercise. When views are positive, people are more likely to be active and resilient and to have a stronger will to live.
More than 400 scientific studies have demonstrated the impact of beliefs about aging. Now, the question is whether people can alter these largely unrecognized assumptions about growing older and take control over them.
In “Breaking the Age Code: How Your Beliefs About Aging Determine How Long and Well You Live,” Becca Levy of Yale University, a leading expert on this topic, argues we can, and has demonstrated in multiple studies that exposing people to positive descriptions of aging can improve their memory, gait, balance, and will to live.
Recently, I asked Levy to describe what people can do to modify beliefs about aging.
Q: How important are age beliefs, compared with other factors that affect aging?
We found that people with positive age beliefs lived longer — a median of 7.5 additional years — compared with those with negative beliefs. Compared with other factors that contribute to longevity, age beliefs had a greater impact than high cholesterol, high blood pressure, obesity, and smoking.
Q: You suggest that age beliefs can be changed. How?
What we’ve shown is it’s possible to activate and strengthen positive age beliefs that people have assimilated in different types of ways.
Q: What strategies do you suggest?
Ask yourself, “When you think of an older person, what are the first five words or phrases that come to mind?” Noticing which beliefs are generated quickly can be an important first step in awareness.
Q: What else can people do to increase awareness?
“Age belief” journaling. That involves writing down any portrayal of aging that comes up over a week. At the end of the week, tally up the number of positive and negative portrayals and the number of times that old people are absent from conversations. With the negative descriptions, take a moment and think, “Could there be a different way of portraying that person?”
Q: What comes next?
Becoming aware of how ageism and age beliefs are operating in society. Think about something that’s happened to an older person that’s blamed on aging — and then taking a step back and asking whether something else could be going on.
For example, when an older adult is forgetful, it’s often blamed on aging. But there are many reasons people might not remember something. They might have been stressed when they heard the information. Or they might have been distracted. Not remembering something can happen at any age.
Q: You encourage people to challenge negative age beliefs in public.
I present 14 negative age beliefs and the science that dispels them. And I recommend becoming knowledgeable about that research.
If I hear something concerning, I often need to take time to think about a good response. You can go back to somebody and say, “I was thinking about what you said the other day. And I don’t know if you know this, but research shows that’s not actually the case.”
Q: Another thing you talk about is creating a portfolio of positive role models. What do you mean by that?
Focus on positive images of aging. Start out with, say, five positive images. With each one, think about qualities you admire and might want to strengthen in yourself.
Q: You also recommend cultivating intergenerational contacts.
Meaningful intergenerational contact can be a way to improve age beliefs. Most of my friends were within a couple of years of my age. If that’s the case with you, think about ways to get to know people of other ages. Seeing older people in action often allows us to dispel negative age beliefs.
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. To find the original story visit: bit.ly/49pZDai

Becca Levy, a professor at Yale University, studies the way beliefs about aging affect physical and mental health. (Photo by Julia Gerace)
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