and again that subjects who hold the
most negative view of ageing – or who
have assimilated pessimistic stereo-
types of the elderly – pay for that bias
on a physical level.
Lev y has been exploring the top-
ic for the last 20 years. In 2002, her
most well-known study examined
data collected in the mid-1970s from
a town in Ohio. Residents over 50
were asked to respond to statements
about ageing. “As you get older, you
are less useful” (yes or no); “As I get
older, things are (better, worse or the
same) as I thought they would be.”
When Levy evaluated the mortality
data from study subjects, she made
a startling discovery: those with the
most negative views of ageing died, on
average, 7.6 years younger than those
with the most positive ones. In fact,
she found that being ageist influenced
lifespan more than gender, incidence
of loneliness or amount of exercise.
There wasn’t an obvious explana-
tion for the ageism effect, but since
the number one killer of people in
that age group is cardiovascular dis-
ease, Lev y wondered if this attitude
stresses the heart, and decided to test
that hypothesis.
In her lab at Yale, Lev y had 54
participants between the ages of 62
and 82 take maths and verbal tests
under a tight time limit. Before they
began, the subjects were ‘primed’
with either positive or negative
stereotypes of ageing: words were
f lashed on a screen too quickly forW
hat we ask Goog-
le about most fre-
quently can eas-
ily be discovered
by seeing how the
search engine autofills the begin-
ning of a statement or question
we’ve typed in. These top results are
also, then, a snapshot of what other
inquiring minds privately think of
the subject that’s just been raised.
In 2013, social scientists from
the Centre for the Study of Group
Processes at the University of Kent in
the UK explored a specific collective
bias by typing “old people should”
into the search bar.
“Old people should not drive,” read
the top result.
And, more disconcertingly, the
second most popular was: “Old peo-
ple should die.”
These troubling findings indi-
cate our society’s indictment of the
elderly. But also, on a deeper level,
they’re a ref lection of our views on
the ageing process itself. The cul-
tural message that has clearly been
swallowed hook, line and sinker: be
afraid, be very afraid, of getting old.
As other researchers have found,
there’s a karmic irony at the centre
of this kind of thinking. Holding
negative opinions of ageing, they’ve
concluded, makes people age more
qu ick l y.
Becca Lev y, a professor of epidemi-
olog y and psycholog y at Yale’s School
of Public Health, has found againREADER’S DIGEST90 Augus t 2019