Volunteering as an Avenue for Improving Views of Aging

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Project Summary/Abstract Emerging evidence suggests that attitudes and beliefs can have a strong impact on individual health. Attitudes about aging are particularly important in predicting late-life cognitive and physical health, and longevity. Whereas negative views of aging are found to be detrimental to older adults’ health and well-being, positive views of aging are protective for health as individuals become older. Although individuals’ attitudes and beliefs about aging develop across the life span in the context of cultural age stereotypes, laboratory studies show that older adults’ views of aging can be altered temporarily through stereotype priming in ways that have direct impact on behavior and physiological processes. Research has yet to investigate whether there are lifestyle strategies older individuals can use to improve their own attitudes about aging in the long-term. The goal of this proposal is to investigate whether the act of contributing to the community through volunteerism can improve older individuals’ views of aging, and ultimately, enhance their health. Aim 1 will examine whether volunteering is associated with improvements in views of aging over time. Given evidence of increased prioritization of socially and emotionally meaningful goals in later life, the social value and generative qualities of volunteerism present a promising context in which older adults can feel valuable and important to their communities, and potentially reduce negative age stereotypes depicting late-life social role loss. Thus, we predict that older adult volunteers’ views of aging will improve relative to those of an age-matched non-volunteering comparison group. Aim 2 will examine whether increases in positive views of aging enhance the health benefits of volunteering. Growing evidence suggests that older adult volunteers are healthier than their non-volunteering counterparts, and that volunteering may, in fact, improve cognitive and physical health over time. Given longitudinal associations between positive views of aging and health, we predict that improved views of aging will enhance the health benefits associated with volunteering over time. Understanding potential relationships among volunteerism, attitudes about aging, and individual health can contribute to building a more positive view of aging among both older people and society at large, and, ultimately, enhance the health of our aging population.