Is Your Mind Getting in the Way of Your Memory? |
People worry about losing their memory as they get older, but how much does this affect their actual memory?
A new study shows the value of maintaining a positive mindset about aging to keep your mental acuity sharp.
Refuse to be defined by negative views of aging, and you can defend yourself against those very beliefs.
It’s natural to be concerned about losing your memory as you get older, particularly since all you hear in the media is that it’s an inevitable process. What’s worse, you can hardly go online or watch TV without running into an ad telling you that not only will your memory deteriorate with age, but also that if you buy whatever product an advertiser is pitching, you can avoid this dire fate.
Belief in Memory Failure Can Cause Memory Failure
Despite the anti-hoopla in the scientific community about what a waste of money these products are, people still buy them. Now, the newest entry into the aging-memory debate shows even more emphatically why maybe the hype about memory loss is causing not just a little more harm than good, but a lot.
A new study by University of Queensland’s Sarah Coundouris and Julie Henry tests the effect of what’s called “self-directed ageism” on a certain form of memory—namely, the ability to remember what you’re supposed to do, or “prospective” memory. The term is somewhat self-explanatory, but for clarity, the authors define it as “the many ways in which ageist beliefs become increasingly self-relevant and internalized.”
Prior research has already demonstrated that internalized ageist beliefs, known as “stereotype threat,” can influence memory for past events. Prospective memory includes an additional twist beyond recall of the past. To remember what you need to do, you have to initiate the process by reminding yourself to get started on it, or by seeing some sort of cue and then realizing that the cue means you’re supposed to complete some action.
Ageism should have a particularly pernicious impact on these forms of memory because it incorporates the belief that your mind is deteriorating into what might be already a bit of a challenge for some people. Whether consciously or subconsciously, this belief drains your ability to focus on what is arguably a more difficult task than simply remembering something that’s already happened.
Putting Ageism’s Effect on Memory Into a Real World Setting
Many studies on aging and memory are conducted in a lab, which may or may not produce results applicable to a real-world setting. We don’t always know from these studies what the people who complete lab-based tasks would do as they go about their daily activities. Consequently, the Australian research team decided to use a smartphone app that participants could take home. The program gave participants several tasks they were to perform based either on the time of day or the occurrence of a particular event. To get these tasks correct, they had to complete them within 2 minutes of the cue’s occurrence.
The actual performance on these tasks served as an objective memory indication. The authors were also interested in assessing the possibility that “subjective” memory could also play a role in the process. Participants simply had to estimate the frequency of their prospective memory errors.
The 183 participants, ranging in age from 41 to 85 years (average, 64 years), completed a series of questionnaires designed to test their beliefs in ageism, their self-directed ageism, and their personal views of aging. There were some positively worded items as well to balance out the negative.
Here are some of the sample questions:
Self-directed ageism:
The human body is like a car: when it gets older, it gets worn out.
It’s normal to be depressed when you’re old.
Forgetfulness is a natural occurrence just from growing old.
Positive views of aging:
As people age, they become wiser.
People generally become kinder as they age.
When people get older, they have more time to relax and enjoy life.
As people get older, they become more reliable.
Personal views of one’s own aging:
I am more accepting of myself as I have grown older.
I feel excluded from things because of my age.
My health is better than I expected for my age.
As you read these questions, perhaps you formed your own judgment of whether you’re a prime suspect for letting negative views of aging create obstacles in your memory, even if you’re not aware of this happening.
Personal views of aging turned out to be, when all analyses were completed, predictive of subjective memory, meaning that feeling good about getting older can help boost your internal estimates of your memory ability. More importantly, though, what about actual memory?
The results become a bit complicated when considering all the possible ways that these related factors could interact. The bottom line, though, was that the general set of expectations was upheld. The combination of negative personal views of one’s own aging plus generalized ageist beliefs in fact predicted poorer actual memory performance on the daily tasks.
There was one slight variation of interest beyond this overall set of findings. People who had generalized negative beliefs about aging and who also were high in self-directed ageism had, surprisingly, higher memory scores. This happened, believed the authors, because if you hold negative beliefs about aging’s effect on you, it’s possible you would do everything in your power to hang onto your memory skills. Maybe you make more use of memory aids, such as writing notes to yourself. It’s also possible that you put up an inner barricade in your mind to avoid seeing yourself as old. Indeed, other research shows a slight protective effect on self-concept of regarding “them” as old, rather than “you.”
Putting the Power of Positive Views to Work
Thinking about this bottom line, and the idea that a combination of believing you’re getting old and believing that aging is bad can make undesirable outcomes more likely, it’s clear that ridding yourself of negative views of aging will ultimately benefit your mental skills. If you also take steps to stave off time’s impact on your memory, this could become the winning combination.
Look back at those statements in the various ageism measures in the Coundouris-Henry study. How many of the negative ones do you ascribe to? Is there a way you can change or challenge those beliefs? You might also try paying attention to the little gears turning inside your mind the next time you have an important event or task to remember. Do you say to yourself, “My memory is so terrible, I’m bound to forget”? Or, maybe just as importantly, do you figure out some end-runs around the possibility of forgetting? If not, try taking advantage of the almost infinite number of smartphone-based ways to keep your dates straight. No one's going to tattle on you for relying on an online calendar.
To sum up, memory is a delicate instrument that can be easily abused by expecting the worst. Don’t let aging get in the way of your self-confidence, and you’ll find yourself able to rise to almost any occasion.
Coundouris, S. P., & Henry, J. D. (2026). The role of self-directed ageism in prospective memory function. Psychology and Aging. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/pag0000955
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