Age ain't nothing but a number
October 30, 2014 4:46 AM   Subscribe

One day in the fall of 1981, eight men in their 70s stepped out of a van in front of a converted monastery in New Hampshire. They shuffled forward, a few of them arthritically stooped, a couple with canes. Then they passed through the door and entered a time warp. Perry Como crooned on a vintage radio. Ed Sullivan welcomed guests on a black-and-white TV. Everything inside — including the books on the shelves and the magazines lying around — were designed to conjure 1959. This was to be the men’s home for five days as they participated in a radical experiment, cooked up by a young psychologist named Ellen Langer.
posted by ellieBOA (25 comments total) 24 users marked this as a favorite
 
A fascinating article. Who knew being "stuck in the past" could be good for you? Makes me wonder if I should give up on trying to keep up on today's pop culture and just wallow in old punk rock cassette tapes and Buffy reruns on VHS.

I thought it was odd how the article kept talking about this forthcoming cancer study, and kind of left us in suspense as to how it will turn out. Why not wait a while, get the results, then publish the article?
posted by Ursula Hitler at 5:08 AM on October 30, 2014 [1 favorite]


Good luck to the 2050 researcher trying to recreate the lived environment of 2014.

(And with that, Devonian looked at the ceiling-level Great Tottering Pile Of Novel Ideas and sighed the great sigh...)
posted by Devonian at 5:17 AM on October 30, 2014 [4 favorites]


I took a 100-level course with Ellen Langer about a decade and a half ago--probably intro to social psych--and every lecture revolved around mindfulness. There wasn't a single topic that she couldn't or didn't relate to mindfulness, and we were reminded at every turn about her work in mindfulness.

But she never, so far as I can remember, mentioned this work. The result, and even the magnitude, isn't entirely surprising. My wife has worked in physical therapy at a nursing home for a good number of years now, and she's very clear on how important it is to instill the right mindset in patients (where reasonable); the mental part of the work is, in many ways, as important as the physical.

I'm a bit skeptical that mentally turning back the clock would have significantly (and reliably) more benefit than solid encouragement and reminders that the patient is capable and improving, although I suppose for non-specific treatment, rather than for a particular injury or disability, it could be the case (the cancer study is, in that regard, interesting, but I don't know that I have high hopes).

As for the "mindfulness centers?" I don't see why we ought to hold her to a higher standard than your strip mall yogi who wants to take you up into the mountains for a weekend. Nobody's being hurt--unless they're selling it as a panacea to the broke and ailing, of course--and if the profit ultimately funds a study that makes a difference, even if only in understanding ourselves, what's the harm?
posted by uncleozzy at 5:30 AM on October 30, 2014


Only borderline relevant, but I think it's interesting...

Years ago I read an article by a journalist who went undercover as a high school kid, and one of the most amazing parts of it was how she regressed in ways she never expected. Acting and being treated like a kid all day did a real number on her psychology. She found herself headed back to the nerd table in the cafeteria, ditching class with her new friends, shirking her homework, developing (entirely inappropriate) crushes on boys in class and basically regressing completely to the kid she'd been over a decade before. She even started to argue with her boyfriend like he was her dad. He'd interrupt her phone calls with her school friends to remind her about paying the bills and her other adult responsibilities, and she'd snap at him like a sullen kid being nagged by her parent. It's been a long time, but IIRC she thought she was even looking younger, like it got easier and easier for her to pass as a kid until strangers on the street just assumed she was a teenager. Freaky stuff.

I don't know if those were all just the quirks of her own psychology, or if most adults would respond like that if they spent a month or so in high school passing as a kid. I'd like to see that explored further, and as I write this I'm wondering why it isn't a reality show already. (I guess you couldn't legally fool the school or other students like that, and it seemed like being totally immersed was what made the difference for her.)
posted by Ursula Hitler at 6:01 AM on October 30, 2014 [18 favorites]


Most appropriate reaction gif evar.
posted by brokkr at 6:26 AM on October 30, 2014 [4 favorites]


I suspect that anyone who's had long(ish) term depression will recognise that novelty, autonomy, achievable responsibility, and engaging activities can work miracles for how you experience your physical body. I can definitely believe that people's experience of age is strongly shaped by their expectations (rather like those experiments where you give undergrads alcohol-free beer and watch them go crazy), but I wonder how much of that is actual biophysical changes, and how much is "just" perception of the same aches, tiredness, or whatever.
Her theory was that the diabetics’ blood-glucose levels would follow perceived time rather than actual time; in other words, they would spike and dip when the subjects expected them to. And that’s what her data revealed.
That's extremely surprising. I would've thought that those systems would be running off simple biochemical cues (blood sugar, glycogen, etc), without much input from any part of the brain clever enough to know what time it is.

The issues around patient consent in her experiments are interesting, too:
In June, progress stalled when the board at U.S.C. asked that the language be tweaked. “There’s so much stuff that’s totally outrageous in this world,” Langer told me at the time. “They want me to add a consent form for the people to sign saying there’s no known benefit to them. But that just introduces a nocebo effect!”
This sort of language is very standard in Phase I studies, as far as I know, and is very important. Medical ethics demands that participants can make an informed choice, but if giving that information undermines the whole study, what do you do? They say that they've resolved the issue, but not how. I'd be interested to see what they settled on.

Ursula Hitler - I don't know if those were all just the quirks of her own psychology, or if most adults would respond like that if they spent a month or so in high school passing as a kid.

Much less dramatic, but looking at my friends in and out of academia, I see a pretty clear difference not just in life stage (the non-academics are dramatically more likely to be married, buying houses, settling into their local communities), but in attitude, too. The grad students and academics just seem to act much younger than our more settled counterparts, in all sorts of small ways. I speculate about this a lot, (Mixing with many more undergrads and masters students than with older faculty? Something to do with the difficulty of long-term planning when you're constantly on short-term contracts? Workplaces where conformity and formality are much less valued? Irregular working hours making us less likely to get into routines?) but haven't found a satisfying explanation. Whatever the reason(s), it definitely seems to be a real pattern amongst my acquaintances, and magnified between certain cities.
posted by metaBugs at 7:09 AM on October 30, 2014 [2 favorites]


How about people whose social and political beliefs appear to be stuck in 1959?
posted by overeducated_alligator at 7:13 AM on October 30, 2014 [2 favorites]


I assume you're being flip, overeducated_alligator, but could that be a way we subconsciously fend off aging and the attendant health issues? Maybe your elderly uncle isn't ranting about the coloreds just to piss you off - maybe it's keeping him alive!
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 8:03 AM on October 30, 2014 [1 favorite]


Yeah, just a joke, really. Although… I read this article when it was posted online about a week ago, and it left me wanting a more rigorous explanation. What I don't understand about Langer's model is how her version of "mindfulness" (which she admits is not the same thing as the Eastern-flavored version) relates to placebo effects. Langer's version of mindfulness is a sensitivity to how things really are around you, apart from your preconceived notions—so you don't miss the gorilla on the basketball court.

However, the experiments this article discusses appear to me to be more similar to hypnosis—they start from a suggestion, that is, of giving people preconceived notions to hold onto, in spite of what reality may be.

So, on the one hand, if I were a person at the 1959 Camp, employing "mindfulness" as Langer urges us to do in all her other work, I might notice the cracks around the edges of the illusion, the ways in which it's constructed, the things that "give away" the reality of what's actually happening. I probably wouldn't be able to convince myself to act as if it were really 1959, because I'm attuned to the little cues that reality is giving me that this is all a Potemkin village. But, if I buy into the notion of acting like it's 1959, of purposefully ignoring the finer points of reality (an obliviousness which Langer elsewhere calls "mindlessness"), this auto-hypnotic mindset will improve my health?
posted by overeducated_alligator at 8:33 AM on October 30, 2014


I'm wondering why it isn't a reality show already.
Actually, there was a movie that kinda visited this...
And also Family Guy: here and here

Although, now that I think about it, there are probably tons of movies and shows that explore this theme...
posted by bitteroldman at 8:37 AM on October 30, 2014


I'm wondering why it isn't a reality show already.

There was some show I saw on PBS not too long ago about a family which was living in a situation where they were "put" a few decades into the past technologically and then every week (or was it every day?) packages would arrive at their door and they would get the technology that had been developed during the next year or whatever.

Basically they retreated into an era with no internet, no cell phones, no cable TV... and then lived on fast forward while the new tech arrived into their lives regularly.

It was pretty fascinating. My google-fu is failing me, however.
posted by hippybear at 10:04 AM on October 30, 2014


Perry Como crooned on a vintage radio. Ed Sullivan welcomed guests on a black-and-white TV. Everything inside — including the books on the shelves and the magazines lying around — were designed to conjure 1959.

Not back far enough. Not by a long shot.
posted by IndigoJones at 10:56 AM on October 30, 2014


It's interesting, but some of the apparent results might also be explained by the fact that she took a bunch of people out of their increasingly isolated lives and put them together as a group with a clear purpose. When people age their friends and family tend to die off and they end up with a lot of time on their hands, which can be very depressing. Reversing those two trends probably has beneficial health effects for everybody, regardless of whether it happens at Counterclockwise Weeks or in a UFO cult.
posted by Kevin Street at 3:19 PM on October 30, 2014 [2 favorites]


Although, now that I think about it, there are probably tons of movies and shows that explore this theme...

Well, sure, fictional ones. I was specifically contemplating a reality show, though. It'd be interesting to see how real people responded to a situation like this.

I wish I could remember where I read that article. I remember a lot of details, but not where I saw it. IIRC she was in a US school and passed as a French student, figuring that being from another country might help explain some of her "oddness" and any gaps in her teen pop culture knowledge. She was found out before the experiment was over, and I remember how mortified she was and how sad it made her that her friends and teachers were so upset with her. It seemed like a really well-written, insightful article.

I remember that one of the tricks she used to de-age herself was something an actor taught her, that you should think about all of your cares and worries AS HARD AS YOU CAN for a moment, then let it all go. The resulting look of dazed blankness apparently takes years off!

Getting back to THIS article, it's funny to think that being stuck living with the trappings of your youth could be rejuvenating, when common sense would seem to suggest that you're stagnating and it's bad for you. Nobody ever says anything good about you living in the past, you know?
posted by Ursula Hitler at 3:24 PM on October 30, 2014


This is fascinating and seems to connect with an idea I've been idly considering. Thanks to elderly relatives I've spent a lot of time in retirement and nursing homes in the past few years and it occurred to me that one problem a lot of residents have is just dealing with new things. My mother, for example, grew unable to work a modern coffeemaker or electronic thermostat. I had to track down a old fashioned percolator and vintage round thermostat for her to use.

I finally realized how it would probably be more comfortable for her if she could retire into those years in which she was most active and aware. She would, I'm convinced, be perfectly happy spending her remaining years in the 1960s or 1970s.

It seems to be that there would be a strong market for that. Imagine a large, multi-wing retirement home in which it's a different era in each wing. TV shows, movies, radio, newspapers, popular food, appliances, clothes and furnishings, everything would make it feel like the 1950s, 1960s, and so on. At some point, when the population got too small, you'd upgrade the oldest era wing to the newest decade.

I am convinced people would love and pay for this.
posted by LastOfHisKind at 3:34 PM on October 30, 2014 [8 favorites]


It sounds so plausible that it's hard to believe no one has done it before now. Maybe in Japan?
posted by Kevin Street at 3:38 PM on October 30, 2014


Hey, if it works for Castro...
posted by Navelgazer at 3:45 PM on October 30, 2014


I wonder if it requires full immersion in your past era, and/or it only works on elderly people. If somebody who was 45 now immersed himself in the early 1990s, would it make him feel young again or would it just be stifling and unhealthy?
posted by Ursula Hitler at 4:25 PM on October 30, 2014


How long do these results last? And yeah, how many are associated simply with being in a new place with lots of social support?

I'm guessing this wears off rather fast, unfortunately— just like a million other interventions that appear good when you first try them. But it's certainly worth testing in a much more controlled fashion.
posted by Maias at 6:15 PM on October 30, 2014


...most adults would respond like that if they spent a month or so in high school passing as a kid.

If returning to high school isn't a vision of hell, I don't know what would be.

Makes facing 60+ look reaaall good!
posted by BlueHorse at 6:51 PM on October 30, 2014


I can't help but think about those old men who spent a week feeling young and healthy and full of life again - but then had to come crashingly back to the reality of their old age and infirmity when the week was over. I'm sure the new awareness of the role of their mental state on their physical state helped them to rebound from the aging doldrums better than they could before the study, though.

Interesting studies.
posted by aryma at 7:52 PM on October 30, 2014


see a pretty clear difference not just in life stage (the non-academics are dramatically more likely to be married, buying houses, settling into their local communities), but in attitude, too. The grad students and academics just seem to act much younger than our more settled counterparts, in all sorts of small ways.

It's mostly economics, partly environment, I suspect.

A plumber fresh out of trade school is going to work at ~40K/year towards buying a truck, home ownership, meeting neighbors, breeding, etc. Meanwhile, a grad student fresh out of undergrad is working at ~20K/year towards finishing a thesis and buying groceries. Then a post doc, maybe a second post doc and finally a tenure track job before they think about the sensible sedan/monster truck, home ownership, etc.

So it makes good financial sense for the grad student to live as if they were an undergrad.
posted by sebastienbailard at 10:51 PM on October 30, 2014


Something similar has been used as a treatment for dementia in care homes & hospitals in the UK.
posted by theseldomseenkid at 12:55 AM on October 31, 2014


At Grove Care in Winterbourne they have recreated a 1950s street as a memory exercise for residents.
posted by Ness at 8:25 AM on October 31, 2014


I had a friend who had a stroke and suffered severe aphasia. He was an AV geek in the 70s, so I located an old school portable cassette recorder and a pile of cassette tapes for him. He lit right up when he saw it; he clearly recognized it and felt affinity for it. It made him happy to have it. But he still couldn't operate it without help. :-(
posted by elizilla at 8:36 AM on October 31, 2014


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