Ellen Langer, a social psychologist at Harvard, investigated the effects of contextual change on aging. She took a group of male subjects ages seventy five to eighty to a retreat and divided them into an experimental group that was to behave and speak as if they were living thirty years earlier and a control group that was instructed to only reminisce about thirty years earlier while maintaining their context in the present. In the area were the experimental group was housed; all the music, news, dress, speech and surroundings reflected the era they were instructed to recreate, whereas the control group lived in surroundings reflecting the present. Pre-post measures were taken of strength of handgrip, triceps skin fold, vision with and without glasses, visual memory and other physical and cognitive markers of “aging”. Several measures were repeated throughout the stay and the experiment was concluded after five days.

 

The pre-post measures showed improvement in all areas for the experimental group with no change in the control group. Remarkably, independent raters reported that subjects in the experimental group looked an average of three to five years younger from pre-post photographs after only five days of re-enactment, whereas no differences were noted for the control group.

 

“A culture defines the biocultural portals as well as interprets the health and the quality of aging.”

 

 

I argue that growing older is the cognitive and biological accumulation of time, whereas aging is the consequences of our behavior contextualized within a cultural history. In other words, the passing of time is necessary but not sufficient to account for the cognitive and biological changes that transpire in the aging process. A culture defines the biocultural portals as well as interprets the health and the quality of aging. The biocultural portals are defined by the scientific, aesthetic and transcendental beliefs that are assimilated by the culture.

 

For example, while a 62 year old from an industrialized culture is engaged in behaviors conducive to achieving retirement, a Tarahumara Indian counterpart of the Chihuahua region of Mexico may be running up to 200 miles in a competitive racing sport called “kick ball” that can last several days. The Tarahumaras, known for their longevity, believe that growing older makes them stronger and consequently better runners. Retirement is not one of their biocultural portals. Interestingly, since the Tarahumaras look forward to their expected physical gains from growing older, “middle age crisis” is unknown to them and the usual degenerative pathology associated with aging is rare in their culture.

 

Considering that the life sciences of a culture are not immune to their cultural postulates, medical establishments share a collective reality assimilated from a cultural history that influences the concepts of aging as well as the diagnosis and prognosis of disease. If the assimilated cultural beliefs define aging as an inevitable deterioration of health, then the gerontology of that culture will study and treat the pathology of aging rather than the dynamics of health in the process of growing older. Cognition, biology and historical culture coemerge in a bioinformational field that constantly seeks contextual relevance and meaning. Cognition and biology occur simultaneously as a biocognition within a context of cultural history that can only be separated artificially and the separation can only yield partial information about the total experience.

 

“Beliefs are assimilated from the cultural and personal history of the believer.”

 

 

Rather than mere thoughts separated from their biology, cultural beliefs are biocognitions that influence the health and aging process of the believer. Beliefs are assimilated from the cultural and personal history of the believer. The assimilated beliefs determine when the individual enters the biocultural portals (middle age etc.) and how the admonitions of these restrictive portals affect health and the aging process.

 

I propose that aging is the cognitive and biological effects of biocultural influences, whereas growing older is the cognitive and biological accumulation of time. The life sciences in general and gerontology in particular, must shift from focusing exclusively on the pathology of aging to studying the cultural influences that promote growing older in good health.

 

 

Dr. Martinez answers questions at the Caroline Myss Experts Form on his theory of Biocognitive Psychology and how it applies to relationships and health. For more information about his work, new psychologocial novel, and lectures in the UK and Ireland, please visit his website at www.Biocognitive.com  or write him at ibp@Biocognitive.com.

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