Psychologists and other aging experts are collaborating with the Gerontological Society of America’s Reframing Aging Initiative, a long-term social change effort designed to improve the public’s understanding of aging. The project started with research to understand communication strategies and tools to reframe messages around aging. Instead of talking about the “elderly” or “seniors,” for instance, a reframed message uses neutral language such as “older people” or “we” and “us” terms. Instead of talking about a catastrophic “tidal wave” of aging baby boomers, communicators can use affirming language such as “as Americans live longer, healthier lives.”
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Research shows these strategies work. In a trial of the Reframing Aging intervention, participants read one of three “framed” messages about aging—messages that emphasize the contributions of older adults to society, aging as a process of accumulating wisdom and energy, or mechanisms through which prejudice against older adults operates. An unframed message might give statistics about the growing number of Americans over age 65, while a framed message puts the statistics in context, for example by saying, “Getting older is a dynamic process, and older people gather momentum through the buildup of unique experiences and insights.” Compared with people who read unframed aging messages, those in each of the three framed message conditions scored lower on tests of implicit age bias (Busso, D. S., et al., The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, Vol. 74, No. 4, 2019opens in new window).
Since 2019, the Reframing Aging Initiative has trained facilitators across the country to use those research-backed strategies to change the narrative around getting older. Still, breaking down long-standing cultural beliefs about aging will take time. In the research community, “there’s still a tendency toward a deficit mentality—a view that older people have problems that need to be solved,” said Cornell University sociologist Karl Pillemer, PhD. “However, I think there’s movement in the other direction as the field of successful aging is growing.”
