For my books, my wife reads every chapter I write before I send it to my editor. We’ve been together for over 25 years. I’ve had occasion to mention a little something every so often about psychology. Let’s just say that she has learned a lot of psychology. Occasionally, she will ask me some version of this: “What’s that thing called where [perfect description of that thing]?” And then I’ll name the thing, e.g., counterfactual thinking, variable ratio schedule of reinforcement, source amnesia. However, sometimes I struggle to come up with the term. I know that I know it. I’ve taught the dang concept for 30 years, of course, I know it, but I can’t, in the moment, get the right neurons to fire. My nonconscious brain keeps working on it while I move on to other tasks, like sleeping. At 3 am, my brain spits it out. Thanks. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful for my brain’s work, it’s just that 12 hours earlier would have been a bit better.

Psychology instructors love our vocabulary. We love it so much that often the bulk of our multiple-choice exams is about vocabulary. Here’s a definition; which term does it match? Here’s an example; which term does it match?

I first started wrestling with this as I watched my students design perfectly good experiments while answering an essay question, but then mix up the naming of the independent variable and dependent variable.

Since about 95% of our Intro Psych students are not going to major in psychology, which is more important? Their ability to design a good experiment—and recognize a good (and bad!) experiment when they see one—or their ability to accurately name the variables?

Even for our psychology majors, how important is it that they understand the variables in their Intro to Psychology course? I bet they’ll be in Research Methods shortly, where the names of the variables will be hammered into their heads by brute force.  If your psych BA program is one of those that does not require Research Methods, I’d love to have a conversation with you about why you’ve dropped it as a requirement. I have some guesses. I also have some stories about how graduates from such programs have fared in grad school. It’s not good.

In any case, I bet students can miss questions about the independent variable and dependent variable on your Intro Psych exam and still pass the course with flying colors. I’m not entirely sure that I had them straight after taking Intro. I am certain I did after Research Methods, though!

What might it look like if we zoomed our testing lens out just a bit so that we have less focus on terminology and greater focus on the concepts themselves? Here are a few examples.

Let’s start with an experimental design question that does not focus on terminology. This first example is based on this blog post.

A psychological scientist wants to test this hypothesis: The quality of a person’s microphone during an interview affects the likelihood of the person being hired. Which would be the best design for the experiment?

1. Ask one volunteer to listen to an interview that was recorded with a high-quality mic and then listen to the same interview recorded with a low-quality mic. Ask the volunteer which person they would prefer to hire.
2. Ask 50 volunteers to listen to an interview that was recorded with a high-quality mic and then listen to the same interview recorded with a low-quality mic. Ask each volunteer which person they would prefer to hire.
3. Ask one volunteer to listen to an interview that was recorded with a high-quality mic, and ask a second volunteer to listen to the same interview recorded with a low-quality mic. Ask each volunteer which person they would prefer to hire.
4. Ask 25 volunteers to listen to an interview that was recorded with a high-quality mic. Ask a different set of 25 volunteers to listen to the same interview recorded with a low-quality mic. Ask all 50 volunteers to rate how likely they would be to hire the interviewee.

Instead of focusing on the term egocentrism, the following question zooms out to the importance of a caregiver knowing that their toddler cannot see the world through someone else’s eyes.

A 3-year-old shoves another child out of the way and takes their cookie.

1. This behavior is expected of young children because they cannot take the perspective of another person.
2. This child is intentionally bullying another child.
3. We expect that this child will grow up to be a narcissist.
4. Both B and C.

Instead of focusing on the term availability heuristic, the following question zooms out to a social media user knowing that how often they hear about something can influence their perception of how often that thing occurs.

On social media, our friend has just watched at least five videos where people were cooking chicken with Nyquil (a very dangerous practice!). Our friend says, “This is great! We must try this! Everyone is doing it!”

1. Our friend is overestimating how often an event occurs based on how available it is in their memory.
2. While it’s unlikely that everyone is doing it, based on our friend’s sample, it is likely that most people are doing it.
3. If we show our friend evidence that this is a dangerous activity, our friend will undoubtedly change their beliefs to ours.
4.  Both B and C

Instead of focusing on the term sensorineural hearing loss, the following question zooms out to a music listener knowing that playing their music through headphones at maximum volume can cause permanent damage and why.

Playing music through headphones or earbuds at maximum volume…

1. Will not cause hearing loss
2. Will cause hearing loss because of damage to the auditory nerve
3. Will cause hearing loss because the loud sound waves damage the cilia in the cochlea
4. May cause ringing in the ears (tinnitus)
5. Both C and D

Instead of focusing on the terms systematic desensitization and extinction, the following question zooms out to a person’s understanding of how to lessen a fear.

Our friend has a fear of needles that is so bad that they refuse any treatment that requires getting a shot. Based on what is known about classical conditioning, what is the most effective way for our friend to reduce their fear?

1. Our friend should continue to avoid needles.
2. Our friend should get a lollipop after every shot.
3. Our friend should have gradual exposure to needles.
4. We should punch our friend in the arm every time they show a fear of needles.

In conclusion, I’m not suggesting that we stop talking about terminology. Giving something a name turns it into a meaningful thing. However, as I consider what my neighbor needs to know about psychology, I’m more interested in the concept and its application rather than what we call it. If these kinds of questions were on a final exam, I wonder how our students would perform and how they would perform if they took that same exam again four years later.

As we witness the proliferation of AI, faculty are returning to in-class assessments. Faculty chatter on social media and the sudden increase in blue book sales provide the supporting data (Shirky, 2025).

I have been a long-time fan of a modified interteaching model (Frantz, 2019). Students would be given a list of essay questions based on the chapter to be read for the coming week. They would answer the questions and bring their answers to class. Students would then work in small groups to identify the questions that gave them the most difficulty, and that’s what I would lecture on. Students would then revise their answers and submit them the following week for a grade. I would choose two questions to score, but the students wouldn’t know which two questions, so all their answers had to be good.

Using this pedagogical strategy in the Age of AI would be challenging. I would imagine that I’d ask students to use AI to answer the questions, and then I’d ask students to revise AI’s answers based on their reading of the textbook. Even then, I imagine students feeding PDFs of the textbook into AI and asking AI to critique its own answers.

The next time I teach, I’ll be returning to in-class testing. Frankly, that will probably take the form of multiple-choice tests. I do this with the full acknowledgment that R. Eric Landrum at Boise State University is correct: Taking multiple-choice tests is the one skill that no employer wants (Landrum, 2016). On the other hand, writing skills were once highly valued by employers. I’m not sure that is still the case. AI may not produce the most eloquent prose, but what it does produce may be just fine for most business situations.

However, one skill that I’m sure employers do still value is the ability to work together in teams. The one thing that kept me giving multiple-choice tests a little longer than I really wanted to was the post-test group test that I used, because I found that so much learning  occurred through it.

Here’s how it worked in my 2-hour-long classes. Students would first take the test solo. After everyone had submitted their completed bubble sheets, students would receive a brand-new bubble sheet. (I used ZipGrade, so I provided the bubble sheets.) Students would answer the test questions again, but this time they could work together, use their notes, and consult their textbooks. Since everyone had their own bubble sheets, they didn’t have to come to a consensus on the answers. If I were to use this technique in the Age of AI, I would not allow the use of the Internet, so students would not be able to use their e-books. I would, however, bring a few print copies of the book to class for students to use.

While I had some students who would work solo during the group test, most students would work in small groups. If a group couldn’t decide on an answer, they’d ask another group. I recall at least one instance when the entire class discussed a question. For that discussion, I left the room to make it easier for students to share their thoughts without worrying about what I might be thinking.

The greatest value of group testing is that students who understand a concept can explain it to those who don’t. That not only helps the students who didn’t understand the concept, but by teaching it, it strengthens the knowledge of that concept in those who do.

As an added benefit, during a group test, students with strong multiple-choice test-taking skills can model to other students how to think through a multiple-choice question. (There’s a question for anyone looking for a scholarship of teaching and learning research project: Does taking group tests improve a student’s multiple-choice test-taking skills?)

When I did this, my solo tests were worth 50 points and my group tests were worth 25. Because of how much students learned during the group tests, if I were to use them now, I’d probably make both worth the same number of points.

One caveat. Not all multiple-choice tests are created equal. So many of our psychology tests are vocabulary tests. In an upcoming blog post, I’ll share some thoughts on a different approach to multiple-choice tests.

References

Frantz, S. (2019, July 30). Interteaching: Shifting responsibility for learning from instructor to student. Macmillan and BFW Teaching Community. https://community.macmillanlearning.com/t5/psychology-blog/interteaching-shifting-responsibility-for-learning-from/ba-p/6899

Landrum, R. E. (2016, April 27). It’s time: Getting serious about national advocacy for undergraduate psychology majors. Western Psychological Association Terman Teaching Conference, Long Beach, CA. https://westernpsych.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Terman-Schedule-2016-Long-Beach.pdf

Shirky, C. (2025, August 26). Students hate them. Universities need them. The only real solution to the A.I. cheating crisis. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/opinion/culture/ai-chatgpt-college-cheating-medieval.html

This is the seventh in a series of posts based on Becca Levy’s book Breaking the age code: How your beliefs about aging determine how long & well you live.

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Ask your students to rank order these longevity-lengthening factors from least impact to biggest impact.

Low cholesterol

Low blood pressure

Low body mass index

Not smoking

Positive beliefs about aging

And the answer is…

Low body mass index (BMI). On average, a low BMI tacks on only one extra year of life. This is one reason BMI is a poor measure of health.

Not smoking comes in second. Non-smokers, on average, extend their lives three years.

Low blood pressure and low cholesterol tie for third place. Both give us, on average, an extra four years.

Holding positive age beliefs is our big winner. It gives us, on average, a whopping additional 7.5 years (B. Levy, 2022).

Phrased the other way around, holding negative age beliefs lopped 7.5 years off people’s lives. Invite students to work in small groups to discuss why negative age beliefs could shorten a person’s life or why positive age beliefs might extend it.

After the discussion has waned, ask a volunteer from each group to share their ideas.

One possible explanation for why negative age beliefs would decrease longevity is stress. If you think that becoming older is a horrific thing, then every passing year will bring you closer to the inevitability of your worst nightmare. And the research bears this out. In a longitudinal study, volunteers over the age of 50 who had positive age beliefs showed no change in cortisol levels over the next 30 years. In contrast, volunteers who had negative age beliefs showed a steady increase in cortisol levels over that same period. In fact, cortisol levels in this group rose 44% (B. R. Levy et al., 2016).

“[P]eople with negative age beliefs, compared to those with positive age beliefs, are less likely to engage in healthy behavior, since they regard it as futile” (B. Levy, 2022, p. 99). It didn’t take me long to think of people in my life who hold negative age beliefs and who eschew preventative medical care and other behaviors that benefit health, such as regular exercise, healthy eating, and good sleep. I can also think of many who hold positive age beliefs and who engage in healthy behaviors.

We also cannot dismiss the power of having a reason to live. In cultures that are more collectivist, people are more likely to live in multigenerational households where elders are more likely to be highly respected. “Japanese children…are taught to enjoy and look forward to spending time with their elders…and many characters in folktales for children are older people who give off a sense of infectious happiness and contentment” (B. Levy, 2022, p. 106). There are some examples of valued elders in American and British literature, but they stand out because they are the exceptions, such as Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings, Dumbledore and McGonagall in Harry Potter, and Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars. None of these characters, though, is your average grandparent. They all have special skills.

Conclude this class discussion by asking students to work in small groups to generate three to five ideas for how they could develop more positive age beliefs, or if they already have positive age beliefs, how they could encourage others to develop them.

References

Levy, B. (2022). Breaking the age code: How your beliefs about aging determine how long & well you live (First edition). William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

Levy, B. R., Moffat, S., Resnick, S. M., Slade, M. D., & Ferrucci, L. (2016). Buffer against cumulative stress: Positive age self-stereotypes predict lower cortisol across 30 years. GeroPsych: The Journal of Gerontopsychology and Geriatric Psychiatry, 29(3), 141–146. https://doi.org/10.1024/1662-9647/a000149

During the COVID lockdown, Yale psychological scientist Brian Scholl “found himself reacting unexpectedly to two of his colleagues. One was a close collaborator with whom Scholl usually saw eye to eye, and the other was someone whose opinions tended to differ from his own. On that particular day, though, he found himself siding with the latter colleague” (Nuwer, 2025, p. 18). After the meeting, it occurred to Scholl that his close collaborator “had been using the junky built-in microphone of an old laptop, whereas the one with whom he typically disagreed had called in from a professional-grade home-recording studio” (Nuwer, 2025, p. 18). Could audio quality affect our perceptions of others?

Give your students this scenario.

You have a big job interview coming up. It is going to be held on Zoom. For your classes that are held using web conferencing apps, you’ve been using your laptop’s built-in microphone. It doesn’t sound very good, but it gets the job done. For this interview—and potentially other interviews—is it worth paying for a higher quality mic?

Researchers wondered the same thing. Could the quality of our microphones affect how other people perceive us?

Ask students to work in small groups to design a study that would test this. First, students need to decide on their dependent variable(s). What kinds of perceptions do they think might be influenced by mic quality? And then they need to create operational definitions for each dependent variable.

Next, their independent variable will be microphone quality. Students need to decide what levels they will have for their independent variable and the operational definitions for each level.

After the discussion has died down, invite volunteers from each group to share their experimental designs.

Next, share with students this open-access study conducted by researchers at Yale and the University of British Columbia (Walter-Terrill et al., 2025). Researchers randomly assigned volunteers to hear either a clear recording made with a high-quality mic or a distorted recording. The recording was the same one. For the distorted version, the researchers manipulated the clear recording to emulate poor mic quality without compromising comprehension. (Download the clear and distorted recordings.) For this study, the dependent variable was hireability: “What is the likelihood that you would hire this person?” (Walter-Terrill et al., 2025, p. 5). The volunteers were shown a bar and were asked to use a mouse to slide a marker on a scale that was anchored on either end with “Very Unlikely” (0) and “Very Likely” (100). The volunteers who heard a clear recording rated their likelihood of hiring, on average, at 76. Those who heard the distorted recording rated the person’s hireability at 68.5.

The researchers went on to do additional studies that evaluated audio quality on judgments of romantic desirability, credibility, and intelligence. In all cases, the clear recording was rated higher than the distorted recording (Walter-Terrill et al., 2025).

If time allows, ask students, based on this research, if they think the quality of the instructor’s microphone could affect student perceptions of instructors? Or could the quality of a student’s microphone affect instructor perceptions of a student? Do you have any students who might be interested in taking on either or both research projects?

References

Nuwer, R. (2025). Mic drop. Scientific American, 333(1), 18–19. https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican072025-OLZyx4Fhf28IWyWOQWuMi

Walter-Terrill, R., Ongchoco, J. D. K., & Scholl, B. J. (2025). Superficial auditory (dis)fluency biases higher-level social judgment. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 122(13), e2415254122. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2415254122

This is the sixth in a series of posts based on Becca Levy’s book Breaking the age code: How your beliefs about aging determine how long & well you live.

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Near the end of chapter five, which is on mental health, Becca Levy introduces us to Zimbabwe’s Friendship Bench. The idea came from Dixon Chibanda, one of only 12 psychiatrists in Zimbabwe, a country of 14 million people. After realizing that grandmothers were a reliable yet untapped resource, “He came up with the idea of teaching grandmothers to offer villagers talk therapy on a park bench in a safe and discreet outdoor place in the community” (Levy, 2022). In Zimbabwe, older adults are greatly respected. People will listen to them. The Friendship Bench grandmothers receive eight days of training by the “clinical team in the evidence based Problem Solving Therapy approach” (FAQ, n.d.). (Read more about problem solving therapy.) The Zimbabwe Friendship Bench has been so successful with its 800 volunteer grandmothers that the model is now used in Malawi, Botswana, and Zanzibar (Levy, 2022).

Questions for classroom discussion

1. Have you ever gone to a grandparent or other similarly-aged older adult for advice? Why or why not?
2. Would a Friendship Bench staffed by grandmothers and grandfathers be successful in your community? Why or why not?
3. Would a Friendship Bench staffed by grandmothers and grandfathers be successful on our campus? Why or why not?
4. If there were a Friendship Bench program on campus, identify the three best locations for the benches. Explain.

As I sat down at my computer to write this post, The Washington Post dropped this article into my inbox. The article describes the Misericordia Place Life Advice Line.

You can call 204-788-8060 and hear prerecorded messages from the residents on various topics. Press 1 for Carl’s advice on following your dreams. Press 3 for Randy’s wisdom on how to grow in new ways (he joined some clubs and got a girlfriend). Press 4 for guidance on surviving Winnipeg winters (if possible, don’t be there). Press 0 for Cheryl’s tips on being true to yourself (“it’s you who has to live with yourself later”) (Penman, 2025).

“Misericordia Place is a 100-bed warm and inviting personal care home, providing quality care 24 hours a day” (“Misericordia Place,” 2025).

For those of you wanting to build more authentic assessments into your courses, here’s an idea. Ask students to work in small groups to identify questions students might like some advice on. Invite students to find people over, say, 80 years old to answer the questions. For example, for relationship questions, the student could visit a local senior center and invite someone who has been married for over 50 years to share their advice. Your institution’s center for alumni might have people on its contact list who would be willing to answer career questions.

The answers are recorded, either video or audio. Be sure your students get permission from each interviewee to use their recording. If your institution does not have such a release form, here is a sample video release document.

Students, next, will edit their recordings to be no more than, say, three minutes long. Review each recording to make sure the content is appropriate and that the interviewee has not revealed anything overly private.

Once the recordings have been approved by you, the groups will need to post their recordings to a publicly accessible location, such as a private YouTube channel, Dropbox, or Google Drive. Next, students will need to create a QR code for each recording. (If students use short.io to create the QR codes, they can track the number of views.) For each recording, students will design a poster for each question that includes, at a minimum, the question or topic and the QR code. Work with your institution to find out how to get your student groups permission to put up the posters.

Could such a project reduce ageist beliefs amongst your students? Or amongst those who watch the recordings? Those are empirical questions worthy of publication.

References

FAQ. (n.d.). Friendship Bench. Retrieved September 14, 2025, from https://www.friendshipbenchzimbabwe.org/services-faq

Levy, B. (2022). Breaking the age code: How your beliefs about aging determine how long & well you live (First edition). William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

Misericordia Place. (2025). Misericordia Health Centre. https://misericordia.mb.ca/programs/long-term-care/misericordia-place/

Penman, M. (2025, September 12). Need advice? Call these older folks for tips on love, dating and moose hunting. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2025/09/12/seniors-hotline-advice-misericordia-place-canada/

This is the fifth in a series of posts based on Becca Levy’s book Breaking the age code: How your beliefs about aging determine how long & well you live.

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Our risk of developing late-onset Alzheimer’s disease is influenced by the apolipoprotein E (APOE) gene. The three most common variants of the gene are ε2, ε3, and ε4. The e2 variant, which occurs in about 10% of the population (B. Levy, 2022), is protective. It reduces our risk of developing Alzheimer’s. The ε3 variant is the most common, and it seems to have no impact on developing Alzheimer’s. The ε4 variant, which occurs in 15% to 25% of the population (ALZinfo.org, 2024), however, increases our risk and is associated with more severe symptoms (Mayo Clinic Staff, 2025). “Having at least one APOE ε4 variant doubles or triples the risk of getting Alzheimer’s disease. Having two APOE ε4 variants increases that risk even more. Someone with two APOE ε4 variants is 8 to 12 times more likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease” (Mayo Clinic Staff, 2025). That’s sobering.

While having APOE ε4 increases our risk for Alzheimer’s, it doesn’t guarantee we will develop it. Becca Levy wondered if positive age beliefs could be one reason why. She and her colleagues analyzed the data from 4,765 people who were 60 years old or older and who showed no signs of dementia at baseline. Through genetic testing, they found that 26% of their participants (n=1,250) had at least one APOE ε4 variant (the one that increases risk). Four years later, some of the participants in the survey had developed symptoms of dementia. But get this. “Among those with APOE ε4, those with positive age beliefs were 49.8% less likely to develop dementia than those with negative age beliefs” (B. R. Levy et al., 2018, p. 1). Reread that sentence. That is nothing short of astounding. One explanation Levy offers is that the culprit may ultimately be stress (B. Levy, 2022). If we believe that aging will be a horrific experience, each passing year will be dreaded more than the last. I can see where that would wear on a person. However, if we believe that aging will be a positive experience, each passing year will be welcomed as an additional year of wisdom and experience. Positive age beliefs may flip the epigenetic switch such that the APOE ε4 gene expression is turned off (B. R. Levy et al., 2018).

Levy wondered if positive age beliefs could boost the protective effects of the APOE ε2 gene. She and her colleagues analyzed the data from 3,895 people who were 60 years old or older and who had 8 years’ worth of cognitive assessments. From this group, they found 13% (n=490) had at least one APOE ε2 variant (the one that decreases risk for Alzheimer’s disease). While positive age beliefs were associated with stronger cognition scores for those who did not have the ε2 variant, positive age beliefs were associated with even stronger cognition scores for those who had the ε2 variant (B. R. Levy et al., 2020).

Regardless of which APOE variant we have, positive age beliefs benefit us. The more I read about positive age beliefs, the more convinced I am that we need to scrub the ageist crap from our interactions with our students, our family, our friends, our casual acquaintances, and our own self-talk.

References

ALZinfo.org. (2024, May 15). A new genetic form of Alzheimer’s disease? Fisher Center for Alzheimer’s Research Foundation. https://www.alzinfo.org/articles/diagnosis/a-new-genetic-form-of-alzheimers-disease/

Levy, B. (2022). Breaking the age code: How your beliefs about aging determine how long & well you live (First edition). William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

Levy, B. R., Slade, M. D., Pietrzak, R. H., & Ferrucci, L. (2018). Positive age beliefs protect against dementia even among elders with high-risk gene. PLOS ONE, 13(2), e0191004. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0191004

Levy, B. R., Slade, M. D., Pietrzak, R. H., & Ferrucci, L. (2020). When culture influences genes: Positive age beliefs amplify the cognitive-aging benefit of APOE ε2. The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, 75(8), e198–e203. https://doi.org/10.1093/geronb/gbaa126

Mayo Clinic Staff. (2025, April 24). The role of genes in your Alzheimer’s risk. Mayo Clinic. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/alzheimers-disease/in-depth/alzheimers-genes/art-20046552

I’m thrilled to announce that this article just published: 

Bernstein, D. A., & Frantz, S. (2025). Teaching an introductory psychology course that matters. American Psychologist. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0001597

If you don’t have access to the American Psychologist, you can access the article on ResearchGate. The American Psychological Association added a pdf of the article to the page. To access it, scroll down on the ResearchGate page and click on the “Publisher Full-text” tab.

If you’re a frequent reader of this blog or have heard me speak in the last few years, you know that I’m a proponent of Intro Psych reform. This blog is called Psych Matters because psychology does matter, and the Intro Psych course is where we can convey that message to the most people. But the content we teach is not always the content which matters most.

We have all fallen into the trap of teaching certain content because that’s what other faculty teach or because that’s what is in the textbook we use. A lot of what we have historically taught has good value, but not all of it. As you teach the course this fall, ask yourself as you prep for each class, “Do people really need to know all of this? And what I am not teaching that my students really need to know?”

Our time with our students is finite. “Whenever we choose to teach something in a course, we are choosing not to teaching something else” (Bernstein & Frantz, 2025, p. 7).

Postscript: I am deeply grateful to my friend Doug Bernstein for his masterful research and writing skills and for insisting that this was a worthwhile project.

Reference

Bernstein, D. A., & Frantz, S. (2025). Teaching an introductory psychology course that matters. American Psychologist. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0001597

This is the fourth in a series of posts based on Becca Levy’s book Breaking the age code: How your beliefs about aging determine how long & well you live.

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In my last post, I wrote about how beliefs about aging can affect memory now and even a whopping 38 years later. Researchers have found similar results for physical functioning.

Becca Levy and  colleagues “found that those with more positive self-perceptions of aging in 1975 reported better functional health from 1977 to 1995, when we controlled for baseline measures of functional health, self-rated health, age, gender, race, and socioeconomic status” (B. R. Levy et al., 2002). Was it just that those with better functional health were more likely to have more positive age beliefs? Nope. Age beliefs predicted later functional health; functional health did not predict age beliefs.

If you’re sharing this research with students, invite students to work in small groups to create an operational definition of functional health. For that study, researchers used the Health Scale for the Aged (Rosow & Breslau, 1966). With only a few questions, it provides a self-assessment of functional health. For example, are you healthy enough, on your own, to walk up and down stairs or to walk half a mile. If you’re unable to access the original paper for the scale, Google Images returned an image of  the scale that was published in a more recent article (Slaninka & Galbraith, 2013).

Since the longitudinal study Levy and colleagues conducted was correlational, they wondered if functional health could be improved with a priming intervention in an experiment. Research participants over the age of 60 were subliminally primed with words associated with positive age stereotypes seven times over an eight-week period. Over the course of the study, the participants’ physical functioning (observed performance of strength, gait, and balance tasks) improved as compared to participants in the control group who received neutral primes. In turn, as the study progressed, the positive-prime participants expressed fewer negative attitudes about aging (B. R. Levy et al., 2014). When older adults are fed positive messages about aging, they regain physical functioning which results in fewer negative attitudes about aging.

Levy and colleagues conducted one more longitudinal study. Again, the results were nothing short of remarkable. Volunteers who were 70 years old and older were interviewed monthly for 129 months. At the beginning of the study, they were asked “When you think of old persons, what are the first 5 words or phrases that come to mind?” (B. R. Levy et al., 2012, p. 1972). Responses were coded, and participants were assigned a score from 1 (most negative) to 5 (most positive). Now, here’s the thing. Lots of bad stuff can happen to people in 129 months. The researchers selected a sample of 598 people from this larger study. To be included in the sample, the participants had to have experienced in those 10 plus years at least one month of disability (required help with bathing, dressing, walking, or moving from bed to chair). Get this. “Older persons with positive age stereotypes were 44% more likely to fully recover from severe disability than those with negative age stereotypes” (B. R. Levy et al., 2012, p. 1973).

“Age beliefs can be a source of security and strength as older people go through disability and eventual recovery” (B. Levy, 2022, p. 56). As I wrote in an earlier post, “Fostering positive attitudes about aging in traditionally-aged college students could result in those same students having a much higher quality of life when they reach older adulthood.” The impact, however, may be even more immediate. If one of your 18-year-old students adopts more positive attitudes about aging, their attitudes may affect the attitudes of their parents and grandparents.

References

Levy, B. (2022). Breaking the age code: How your beliefs about aging determine how long & well you live (First edition). William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

Levy, B. R., Pilver, C., Chung, P. H., & Slade, M. D. (2014). Subliminal strengthening: Improving older individuals’ physical function over time with an implicit-age-stereotype intervention. Psychological Science, 25(12), 2127–2135. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797614551970

Levy, B. R., Slade, M. D., & Kasl, S. V. (2002). Longitudinal benefit of positive self-perceptions of aging on functional health. The Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, 57(5), P409–P417. https://doi.org/10.1093/geronb/57.5.P409

Levy, B. R., Slade, M. D., Murphy, T. E., & Gill, T. M. (2012). Association between positive age stereotypes and recovery from disability in older persons. JAMA, 308(19), 1972–1973. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2012.14541

Rosow, I., & Breslau, N. (1966). A Guttman Health Scale for the Aged. Journal of Gerontology, 21(4), 556–559. https://doi.org/10.1093/geronj/21.4.556

Slaninka, S. C., & Galbraith, A. M. (2013). Healthy endings: A collaborative health promotion project for the elderly. Journal of Gerontological Nursing, 24(9), 35–42. https://doi.org/10.3928/0098-9134-19980901-12

This is the third in a series of posts based on Becca Levy’s book Breaking the age code: How your beliefs about aging determine how long & well you live.

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When research participants over the age of 60 were subliminally primed with words associated with wisdom, e.g., sage, accomplished, astute, they performed better on memory tests. When primed with words associated with senility, e.g., dementia, confused, decrepit, the participants performed worse. When younger participants were primed with the same words, they showed no difference in memory test performance (B. Levy, 1996).

While that study demonstrated a short-term effect, Levy wondered how this would play out over a lifetime. Her daughter helpfully suggested that she use a time machine to go back many years to find out what people believed about aging before returning to the present to find out what those same people believed now (B. Levy, 2022). While a time machine would certainly speed up longitudinal research, our physicists have not yet created such a machine, as far as I know.

Levy did the next best thing. The Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging (BLSA) started in 1958. Their over 3,200 participants (About the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging, 2018) are assessed with a battery of physical and cognitive tests every one to four years (BLSA Study Design and Measures, 2023). Levy learned that in its very first year, the researchers included the Attitude Toward Older Persons scale (B. Levy, 2022). Let’s pause for a minute to consider what a gold mine Levy discovered. In 1958, research participants shared their attitudes about aging, and then over the next 38 years, those same research participants took a whole host of memory tests. What Levy found was nothing short of remarkable (B. R. Levy et al., 2012). She writes, “[P]eople who held positive age beliefs from the outset went on to experience 30 percent better memory scores in old age than their peers with negative age beliefs…[T]his was even greater than the influence of other factors on memory such as age, physical health, and years of education” (B. Levy, 2022, p. 37).

Because the BLSA is an observational study, we don’t know for certain that attitudes about aging in early life caused strong memory test performance. However, when those results are combined with the experimental research, such as Levy’s 1996 priming study that opened this article, it gives one pause.

Fostering positive attitudes about aging in traditionally-aged college students could result in those same students having a much higher quality of life when they reach older adulthood.

While both of Levy’s studies discussed here would fit well in the Intro Psych lifespan chapter, they would also work in the research methods chapter as an example of how experimental and correlational research can work together to help researchers better understand people.

References

About the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging. (2018, July 27). National Institute on Aging. https://www.nia.nih.gov/research/labs/blsa/about

BLSA study design and measures. (2023, February 22). National Institute on Aging. https://www.nia.nih.gov/research/labs/blsa/study-design-and-measures

Levy, B. (1996). Improving memory in old age through implicit self-stereotyping. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71(6), 1092–1107.

Levy, B. (2022). Breaking the age code: How your beliefs about aging determine how long & well you live (First edition). William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

Levy, B. R., Zonderman, A. B., Slade, M. D., & Ferrucci, L. (2012). Memory shaped by age stereotypes over time. The Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, 67(4), 432–436. https://doi.org/10.1093/geronb/gbr120

This is the second in a series of posts based on Becca Levy’s book Breaking the age code: How your beliefs about aging determine how long & well you live.

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Psychological scientist Becca Levy’s stereotype embodiment theory “proposes that negative age beliefs bring about detrimental health effects that are often, and misleadingly, characterized as the inevitable consequences of aging. At the same time, positive age beliefs do the exact opposite; they benefit our health” (Levy, 2022, p. 15).

Reread the above paragraph. The societal messages that tell us about the horrors of aging are slowly killing us.

You’ll be unsurprised to hear that we begin to internalize these messages in childhood, an internalization that continues through adolescence and adulthood.  This internalized stereotype operates below our conscious awareness. As we perceive the stereotype to be more relevant to us, it affects us even more. Lastly, and most importantly for the purposes of this blog post, stereotypes about aging “impact our health through psychological, biological, and behavioral pathways” (Levy, 2022, p. 15).

The American Psychological Association has identified seven integrative themes (APA, 2022), a structure that is very helpful for thinking about how and what we teach in Intro Psych. Of particular relevance to this post is theme #3: “Psychological, biological, social, and cultural factors influence behavior and mental processes.”

After discussing the reality of aging in the lifespan chapter of your Intro Psych course or as an example of theme #3 early in your course, introduce students to Levy’s stereotype embodiment theory. Next, share with students some of the cultural, social, psychological, and biological factors that contribute to it:  

Cultural factors: Many of us live in a culture where ageism is a socially acceptable prejudice (Weir, 2023). The message is clear: Being old is bad.

Social factors: When our friends, family, and acquaintances make dismissive “OK, Boomer” comments, older people feel less valued. In fact, that seems to be the goal of the person saying “OK, Boomer” (Frey & Bisconti, 2023).

Psychological factors: Once we internalize the cultural message that being old is bad, it is hard to feel good about oneself.

Biological factors: Levy and her colleagues have “found that negative age beliefs can increase biological markers of stress…Over time, more frequent and higher spikes in stress biomarkers can lead to earlier death” (Levy, 2022, pp. 18–19).

Talking about stereotype embodiment theory not only gets us to think about how our attitudes about aging affect our own life trajectory and outcomes, but also how our attitudes may affect others, including those we love dearly.

References

APA. (2022). Psychology’s Integrative Themes. American Psychological Association. https://www.apa.org/ed/precollege/undergrad/introductory-psychology-initiative/student-learning-outcomes-poster.pdf

Frey, K. T., & Bisconti, T. L. (2023). “Older, entitled, and extremely out-of-touch”: Does “OK, boomer” signify the emergence of a new older adult stereotype? Journal of Applied Gerontology, 42(6), 1200–1211. https://doi.org/10.1177/07334648231154044

Levy, B. (2022). Breaking the age code: How your beliefs about aging determine how long & well you live (First edition). William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

Weir, K. (2023, March 1). Ageism is one of the last socially acceptable prejudices. Psychologists are working to change that. Monitor on Psychology. https://www.apa.org/monitor/2023/03/cover-new-concept-of-aging