Aging in later life is often portrayed as a steady slide toward physical and cognitive decline. But a new study by scientists at Yale University suggests an alternate narrative — that older individuals can and do improve over time, and their mindset toward aging plays a major part in their success.

Analyzing more than a decade of data from a large, nationally representative study of older Americans, lead author Dr. Becca R. Levy, PhD, a professor of social and behavioral sciences at the Yale School of Public Health (YSPH), found that nearly half of adults aged 65 and older showed measurable improvement in cognitive function, physical function, or both, over time.

The improvements were not limited to a small group of exceptional individuals and, notably, were linked to a powerful but often overlooked factor: how people think about aging itself.

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The authors also examined potential reasons for why some people improve and some do not. They hypothesized that an important factor could be participants’ baseline age beliefs — or, specifically, whether they had assimilated more positive or more negative views about aging by the start of the study. In support of this hypothesis, they found that those with more positive age beliefs were significantly more likely to show improvements in both cognition and walking speed, even after accounting for factors such as age, sex, education, chronic disease, depression, and length of follow-up.

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