Staying Alive with Attitude: Beliefs about aging sway seniors’ survival

Small-town America has a life-enhancing lesson for people who are at least 50 years old: Individuals, those in the heartland’s middle class, anyway, who have a positive outlook about aging live around 7 years longer than those who take a dim view of their prospects as seniors.

“People who have positive views about themselves as they age somehow cope with society’s negative attitudes toward the elderly,” says psychologist Becca R.