How Your Beliefs About Ageing Shape How Long You Live
Older adults with a more positive view of ageing lived around seven and a half years longer.
Longevity, Psychological Wellbeing, Midlife
Researchers at Yale followed 660 people aged 50 and over for more than two decades, drawing on the Ohio Longitudinal Study of Aging and Retirement, then matched the results against national mortality records. Those who held a more positive view of their own ageing lived on average seven and a half years longer than those who viewed it negatively.
The difference held after age, gender, income, loneliness and physical health were accounted for, and part of it appeared to travel through what the researchers called the will to live.
The study is observational, so it shows a strong and repeatedly replicated association; it does not prove that changing a belief directly adds years.
For a woman in midlife, it points to the quiet weight of the story she carries about growing older, and to the value of noticing where that story came from.
