What you know about aging is probably wrong, with Manfred Diehl, PhD

Kim Mills: Ageism: It’s one prejudice that many of us share and many of us may face it, if we’re lucky enough to live a long life. From cosmetic ads that promise a fountain of youth, to those ubiquitous “Okay, Boomer” memes, it’s pretty clear that in American culture, “old” is synonymous with past your prime, and aging is seen as something to dread. But psychologists’ research suggests that, contrary to the myths and stereotypes that we may have absorbed, aging often comes with positive changes, and by believing in and propagating negative myths about aging we can do ourselves real harm.

So what do the physical, cognitive, and emotional changes that come with age actually look like? What do we lose and what do we gain as we age? How much of our aging is under our control and how much is determined by genetics, or luck? How does the age bias and discrimination that people experience in their daily lives affect them, and what kinds of interventions are researchers developing that could help us all stay happy and healthy in older adulthood?

Welcome to Speaking of Psychology, the flagship podcast of the American Psychological Association, that examines the links between psychological science and everyday life. I’m Kim Mills.

My guest today is Dr. Manfred Diehl, a university distinguished professor in the department of human and family studies at Colorado State University. He is a lifespan developmental psychologist who studies adult development, with a focus on how to achieve successful and healthy aging. He studies how middle-aged and older adults become aware of their own aging, and how self-perceptions of aging are related to people’s physical health and psychological well-being. He has won many awards for his research and mentoring, and is co-author of the book The Psychology of Later Life: A Contextual Perspective, published by APA. 

Dr. Diehl, thank you for joining me today.

Manfred Diehl, PhD: It’s a pleasure to be here.

Mills: I mentioned in the introduction that many of us have internalized a lot of myths about aging, so I want to start by exploring, and I hope dispelling, some of those myths. You’ve written that one of the biggest misconceptions is that growing older primarily involves loss and decline. Can you talk about that? What does the research actually say?

Diehl: Indeed, one of the big myths is that aging is only loss and decline, but I think we have now research from a number of decades where we have seen that the picture is more complex. There are areas where decline occurs, especially if people do not use the specific functions; for example, there is normal age related loss in people in terms of muscle strength or bone loss if people don’t exercise. There are normal age related changes in our sensory systems, such as vision and hearing. But on the other hand, there are also areas where there are quite some gains where people become, for example, happier, social relationships tend to increase, personality tends to improve, that people become more agreeable and conscientious over time. We really need to look at, what are the areas where there are challenges that can be addressed to some extent, and where do people have vast opportunities to actually get better over time?

Mills: There is a common notion that mental decline starts as early as people’s 30s. How did this notion arise and what’s wrong with it?

Diehl: Yeah. This notion is, unfortunately, still around. Based on longitudinal data for example, especially data from the Seattle Longitudinal Study, we know by now that in relatively healthy adults, normative age-related decline in most cognitive functions does not occur before the age of 60. Now, when I say that, there are some exceptions. We, for example, know that again, in most people, age related decline in some cognitive functions, such as speed of information processing, may occur earlier, especially if people don’t use those functions. But overall, this myth that age related decline in cognitive abilities starts as early as early 30s came out of a misinterpretation of findings, because so many early studies were done just as cross-sectional studies, comparing people of different ages against each other.

What those kinds of research designs do, they actually confound age with cohort. For example, in those studies, people who are in their 60s or 70s very often perform lower, because maybe they didn’t have the same level of education. Or, again, disuse has already occurred, which really we cannot then draw clear conclusions what is due to just aging, and what is due to other factors including the effect of when a person was born.

Mills: Another one of the misconceptions that you have been working to dispel, is that the changes that happen with aging are beyond people’s control. Now, I understand you have shown that that’s not necessarily the case.

Diehl: Not necessarily I have shown it, but when I wrote about it I drew on literature that clearly indicates that, for example, the portion of genetic variants that effects aging is much smaller, as estimated by behavioral geneticists, than what we can do through our lifestyle. Of course, the important aspect of lifestyle factors, and when I refer to lifestyle factors I mean what we eat, how physically active we are, how we manage stress, whether we smoke or don’t smoke, whether we maintain a normal body weight; lifestyle factors are really under our control, and therefore, the influence that we can have through our own behavior, and behavior here also includes our attitude towards growing older, is of course much larger than most people know.

Mills: How do people’s personalities change as they age? I’m just wondering what happens with respect to the big five personality traits over time.

Diehl: Actually, the news in the personality area is quite positive. We know, for example, one of the major traits in the big five nomenclature is neuroticism, or emotional instability. We know that people, over time, tend to go down in neuroticism, that means people become emotionally more stable. We know that conscientiousness tends to increase, at least until the mid-60s, possibly early 70s, in those studies where we have data on the age group. We also know that agreeableness, that means how well we get along with others, our tendency to be cantankerous, we’re mellowing out a little bit more. Overall, the conclusion from several meta-analyses, is- that in the personality area, we see quite a bit of positive development in terms of becoming socially more mature, coping strategies tend to improve, and emotion regulation also tends to improve, which is of course very important for both individual well-being, but also getting along with others.

Mills: Is this directly related to the fact that the prevalence of major psychiatric disorders is lower in people over 60 compared to younger people?

Diehl: Yes, with some caveats I want to point out. Another misconception is that all old people are depressed, lonely, and sad. Real data actually does not support that; for example, in all major epidemiological studies, older adults tend to show higher life satisfaction and subjective well-being than younger age groups, but moreover, those studies that have looked at the major psychiatric disorders and their distribution in different age groups, have shown that the prevalence rate of all major psychiatric disorders, including depression, anxiety disorders, substance abuse disorders, tend to be significantly lower in older adults than in middle-aged and younger adults.

There is one caveat to that, because this data could potentially be affected by what we call a survivor effect. That means that people who had those disorders at a younger age did not live until the later age. We need to put an asterisk on this finding, by acknowledging that this could be a possible confound in those data.

Mills: That makes sense, I was wondering that very thing. Let me ask you another question. There’s another stereotype out there of the greedy geezer, claiming that older people are a drain on society. Is there any truth to that? The fact is, if you live longer, maybe you’ve got more financial security than younger people, and certainly you’re taking social security. Are the greedy geezers going to wipe out these supports for older people?

Diehl: There is, literally, no support for this greedy geezer notion. Let me explain this from several perspectives. First of all, I think this greedy geezer notion is very often misused and abused by politicians to pitch different generations against each other, especially when it comes to the allocation of resources. We see that in the debates about social security, we see it in the debates about medical care for older adults; it is clear that as we get older we need more medical care, and that creates health care cost. However, this is counterbalanced by the fact that older adults, overall, contribute to society to an extent that most people do not know.

Maybe the most convincing example to support this statement is that many older adults are caregivers, either to a spouse, a disabled grandchild, a neighbor, and so on and so forth. Health care economists have estimated if we would use all the hours that older adults put into caregiving, and we would put a monetary value on those hours, it amounts to about $450 billion a year. Moreover, the monetary value that could be associated, or could be attached, to the number of hours that middle-aged and older adults put into volunteering in their communities is also quite high. I think estimates have been in the range of $200 to $300 billion.

The contributions that older adults make to the U.S. society, and of course other societies, are really underestimated and I think they really do not support the notion of the greedy geezer. Also, many older adults—I don’t want to say that poverty in older adults has been completely eradicated, I think there are still subgroups of older adults who are at a disadvantage, but most older adults have reasonable financial security.

Mills: Now, you and other researchers have found that believing negative aging stereotypes can actually harm people’s physical and mental health as you get older. Can you talk about that?

Diehl: Yes. The colleague that probably has done most of the convincing and supportive work in this area is actually Becca Levy at Yale University. Our research has contributed to this too and there are a number of other psychologists and colleagues in the gerontology area who have made significant contributions. I really want to acknowledge the work that these individuals have done and then describe, in a more summary way, why negative age stereotypes are dangerous, especially if people engage in negative self-stereotyping; that means applying those negative age stereotypes to their own person.

First of all, there is plenty of evidence that when we activate, either in an experiment or through a questionnaire, people’s negative age stereotypes, that it affects their behavior. It affects their behavior that they show poorer memory performance, they start to walk slower, their handwriting becomes shakier, and so on; even their will to live becomes short cut, to some extent. Now, those findings come from really well controlled experimental studies. When we look at quasi-experimental studies, that means sometimes we have data that was observational in nature and we can retroactively analyze them, there is evidence that people who have more negative views of their own aging, that means who hold more negative age stereotypes, tend to live not as long as people with positive views of their own aging, they tend to show more shrinkage of hippocampal volume, they tend to be more prone to experiencing heart attacks or cardiovascular events.

The evidence is clearly there, even when it is correlational in nature. Now, why is that? I think all these findings suggest that negative age stereotypes undermine people’s motivation and behavior to engage in those behaviors that actually can optimize healthy aging.

Mills: What do we know about how much of our changes as we age is under our own control, versus how much is determined by genetics, or just the flip of a coin?

Diehl: When you look at meta analysis that have been done, that look at what is the genetic contribution to certain behaviors, usually we see estimates of about 30 to 40% that is due to genetics. If you flip that around, the remainder is then due to environmental factors; that means 60 to 70% is due to environmental factors, and many of those environmental factors are under our control. When I talk to people out in the community and I share this information with them, very often there is an a-ha moment, that people really realize that aging is not something—because this is one of those beliefs, “Oh, aging is just running its course, and because most of it is genetically determined there is really not a lot I can do.”

But I think when I describe what we know from scientific literature, people actually start to recognize that maybe they are not taking enough opportunity, and taking not enough control of their own aging. We have actually incorporated this into a psychoeducational program, where we systematically provide information to motivate people to engage in behavior change and adopt behavior, such as becoming physically more active, to promote healthier aging.

Mills: Let’s talk for a minute about this idea that ageism is one of the last socially acceptable prejudices in the United States. How prevalent do you think age bias is, and when, and how, are people most likely to experience it? Do we know?

Diehl: Yeah. Actually, the best data regarding this question comes from a fairly recent survey that was done in December 2019, at the University of Michigan. It was a national survey where people were asked whether they experienced ageism in their everyday lives. 82% of the respondents said, “Yes, indeed, there are incidents of everyday ageism that I am exposed to.” Now, when the researchers—82%, can you imagine?

Mills: That’s a big number.

Diehl: That’s a big number. It’s not 10%. It’s not 20%. Eighty two percent is really a big number, and it supports this argument that ageism is quite prevalent. Now, 65% of those answers were that people said, “Oh, it is in remarks that people make toward me, that I clearly am told, ‘Look, you are over the hill, you are an unproductive individual, or whatever.’” Really, ageist remarks along the lines of, “What do you want, you old geezer?”

Then, they broke it down even further, about 45% said it occurred in direct interactions, sometimes in the workplace, sometimes in settings like medical care, but it is a real phenomenon. My educated guess is, it is a real phenomenon because people engage in these kinds of behaviors of an ageist nature, because they’re unaware of it, it happens unwittingly. It’s not that people want to be hostile or anything, but they are simply not aware. Even a remark like, “Oh, you’re actually looking good for your age,” right? How am I supposed to look when I’m 67?

A lot of this ageist behavior really happens unwittingly, and I think the only way we can combat it and counteract it, is by making people aware that sometimes they unknowingly really engage in ageist behavior.

Mills: On the converse side of that coin, are people’s attitudes actually getting more positive towards aging at this point? First of all, we’ve got all these baby boomers who are getting older, reaching not just middle age but old age, and I’m thinking as more people are working longer, more younger people are getting exposed to older people. Are we seeing any changes in attitudes, I think is what I’m basically asking?

Diehl: The answer, overall, is we’re not seeing these changes yet on a broad scale. I think we see it when people actually have the opportunity to actually interact with older adults; let’s say if someone stays in the workplace later and younger workers have the opportunity to really see what this person is still capable of, the expertise that the person may have acquired over the years, then through intergenerational contact and really direct experiences, people’s views of older adults as a group can change. I would see that as positive, however, this has not happened yet on a broad scale. For example, there have been studies that have been looking at how are older adults perceived in the social media. Again, Becca Levy, her students, and colleagues have published on this. What they have coined this is, the age stereotype paradox. On one hand, we know that aging can occur in a more positive way, but why do attitudes toward older adults not keep pace with this? Why are most of the views of older adults still more negative than is actually justified? That’s what they described as the age stereotype paradox.

Mills: What do you think of these programs that aim to counteract this bias, by bringing together older and younger adults to get to know each other? For example, I’ve read of programs that bring seniors to live and study on college campuses. Are these programs effective, do you think?

Diehl: I am very much in favor of these intergenerational programs, where younger generations can see what older generations are capable of, because older adults can learn and break down stereotypes about younger people. I think these programs are really great, they hopefully help us to get rid of these stereotypes of the greedy geezer, but also of the rebellious and ignorant young adult, that older adults can see young adults, like college students or high school students, they are concerned about the environment and what older adults will leave behind for them. Maybe we can form a coalition, maybe we can work together in a more harmonious way towards the same goals, because older adults want to leave behind a legacy of a world that is better than when they grew up, and younger adults look forward to having a world that is worth living in.

I’m very much in favor of those programs. Now, in terms of whether they are effective, I don’t have a complete overview and I really want to be completely open about that. Those studies that I have looked at actually have shown some positive results that are encouraging and promising. I would think that these programs help to break down intergenerational barriers, intergenerational tensions, and also help to break down age stereotypes on both sides.

Mills: On a more macro level, what could we be doing as a society to counteract age bias that maybe we’re not doing right now?

Diehl: I think the media could play a very important role. Currently, we know from numerous studies that older adults are not very positively portrayed in the media; that means movies, TV shows, and so on. I think the media could play a more positive role in really showing how older adults really are; that means not going either extreme, not only showing the frail and adults who are afflicted by illness, and also not showing the superstars, but really show what aging looks like for the average person. Indeed, that has improved tremendously, because people tend to have higher levels of education, people tend to have better, on average, access to health care. When I say on average, of course I want to acknowledge that there are certain groups in our society where disadvantage has accumulated over time, and that minoritized groups are disproportionately affected by those problems. But I think, on average, aging has become more positive, and that’s why in one of my publications I opened the publication with a statement, “Is 60 the new 40?” Because it implies that, at a later age, most people feel younger and may do things that people at a younger age, usually, would do.

Mills: Last question, I often like to wrap up with this: What are you studying now? What are the big questions in the field that still remain to be answered?

Diehl: We just finished a clinical trial and it was a clinical trial where we tested the efficacy of this intervention program. It is not only critically important to show that we can change people’s attitudes toward their own aging, but we also have to show that this has downstream effects, that people change their behavior. I think that is still a big challenge and I definitely will continue to study this more, and hopefully help to identify avenues that allow us to—because the ultimate outcome that we should be interested in, as psychologists, is to improve individuals’ quality of life, but also help to improve how society addresses the aging population, and the phenomenon that more people in our society are individuals of an older age.

Mills: Dr. Diehl, this has been really interesting, I appreciate you taking the time to talk to us. Thank you.

Diehl: Thank you so much for having me and for giving me this opportunity to share my work with your audience.

Mills: That’s great information, thanks again. You can read more about Dr. Diehl’s and other psychologist’s work to combat ageism and reframe aging in the March issue of APA’s magazine Monitor on Psychology. Visit our website at www.speakingofpsychology.org, and go to this episode’s related links. You can find previous episodes of Speaking of Psychology on our website or on Apple, Stitcher, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Again, we’d like to hear from you about what you think of this podcast and what you’d like to hear from us. Please go to our website and look for a link to our listener survey. If you have comments or ideas for future podcasts, you can email us at [email protected]. Speaking of Psychology is produced by Lea Winerman, our sound editor is Chris Condayan. 

Thank you for listening. For the American Psychological Association, I’m Kim Mills.