The Mindset of Aging

Harvard Professor Ellen Langer has spent much of her research years exploring how people age, particularly, how's people's ideas about aging can actually affect the way we age. In 1981, she conducted a study taking two groups of men in their 70s and put them into a 1959 'pastime' house for one week. Tons of memorabilia were laid around the house: a vintage radio was playing throughout, movies from the era were displayed on the old black and white television, even current events in the year 1959 played on the radio like the horse, Royal Orbit, winning the 1959 Preakness. While in the pastime environment one group was told to act as if they were their actual age in 1959 and the other group was told to reminisce about the year 1959.

The two groups of men performed cognitive and physical evaluations before and after the one week experiment. The concluding results are astounding - both groups of men showed significant improvement from their initial baselines for both the physical and cognitive evaluations. Physically their joints were more flexible, their shoulders were wider, fingers more agile; cognitively their intelligence had improved and their hearing and vision were sharper. But the men who had acted as if they actually were back in 1959 had improved even more. It was as if their bodies and minds were actually younger!

"It is not our physical state that limits us - it is our mindset about our own limits, our perceptions, that draws the lines in the sand," says Langer; she calls it "Mindfulness". "Mindfulness is the process of actively noticing new things, relinquishing preconceived mindsets, then acting on the new observations." This study propelled the field of social psychology and how it can affect the aging process for the next 30 years. The study even attempted to be turned into a Hollywood film, bought by Dreamworks and staring Jennifer Aniston playing a young Ellen Langer.

There's much more information on Ellen Langer and her thoughts on Mindfulness in the Harvard Magazine article titled The Mindfulness Chronicles.

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