Importance of a positive approach to ageing (self-fulfilling prophecy explained)

Dr Michael Roberts is ExtraCare’s Engaged Lives Project Officer, working within the Engaged Lives project to build community in our villages. Here, Michael introduces the Positive Ageing movement and outlines what ExtraCare is doing to promote its key messages.

What do the words “old age” make you think of?

Perhaps you’re imagining a stooped figure with a walking stick? Someone who spends all day inside, watching the television? Or someone who’s cranky and resistant to taking on anything new?

These are some of the countless, negative stereotypes that are common in the UK. They also completely fail to reflect the spectrum of experience across the country’s older population.

Take our very own Barrie Pountney, resident at ExtraCare’s Earlsdon Park Village. Now in his seventies, Barrie completed the 311-mile London to Paris Cycle Challenge earlier this year, the latest in his long line of endurance challenges. More broadly, consider people like Brenda Deane, former accountant, who set-up her first business making candles and room diffusers at the age of 82, or famous crime-writer John le Carré, 88, still pumping out best-selling novels two years shy of his tenth decade.

These individuals remind us that not every “elderly” person is bent-double like the figure in the road-traffic sign, or lacking in drive and mental-sharpness. In fact, age needn’t be a barrier to staying fit and active, or to contributing great ideas and initiatives to society.

Negative stereotypes of aging

Our preconceptions about old-age have a huge impact upon our experience of it. In fact, they often act as self-fulfilling prophecies – if you think of older-age as a time of inevitable physical and mental decline, then you’re much more likely to find yourself facing those very things.

A growing body of research indicates that older people who manage to steer clear of negative ageing stereotypes, and adopt more positive visions of later life, show significant improvements in measures of physical and mental health over their more pessimistic counterparts. These people heal quicker. They walk faster. They have lower risk of dementia and cardiovascular problems. They also have better memories, less anxiety and, most strikingly, live an average of 7.5 years longer.

It’s thought that much of this effect stems from the fact that negative ageing stereotypes cause people to lose a sense of control over their health. This leads to feelings of hopelessness, decreased health behaviours and increased reactivity to stress. Put differently, people who think physical and mental decline are unavoidable parts of ageing are likely to exercise less, eat less healthily, visit their GP less frequently, and adopt more psychologically-harmful mindsets, all of which tend to bring on the very things they are expecting.

To help counteract these effects, it’s important to think also about the positive aspects of ageing and those individuals who defy ageing stereotypes. This is something being promoted by the emerging “Positive Ageing” movement.

Positive Ageing theorists like Guy Robertson, author of the upcoming Ten Steps of Positive Ageing, remind us that negative stereotypes don’t only make older age more difficult, they also blind us to the advantages and opportunities that age presents and act as a real barrier to enjoyable and engaged lifestyles.