“The belief about old people is that they’re all kind of the same, they’re doddering, and that aging is this steady downward slope,” says psychologist Laura Carstensen, founding director of the Stanford Center on Longevity. That view, she says, is a great misunderstanding.
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In our 40s, most people are cognitively similar. Divergences in cognition appear around age 60. By 80 “it’s quite dramatically splayed out,” says physician John Rowe, a professor of health policy and aging at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. Yes, there will be a group diminished by dementia and cognitive decline, but in general the 80-somethings “include the wisest people on the planet,” Carstensen says.
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Research has also busted the myth that there is no upside to aging past 70 or so. “We have found very clearly that there are things that improve with age,” Rowe says.
