科学与数学aging.nautil.us
心态与变老之间的关系
The relationship between mindset and getting old
2017 — 2020，它一次次回到首页
黑点是上首页（≥ 50 分）的那次投稿，空心点是没冲上去的投稿，点越大分数越高。
导读
这篇文章介绍了心理学家 Ellen Langer 著名的“逆龄实验”：她把一座修道院布置成 1959 年的样子，让一群八旬老人像二十年前那样生活一周，结果他们在身体指标和心理状态上都出现了年轻化的改善。文章由此探讨心态、环境暗示与衰老之间的关系。
为什么经久不衰：它挑战了“衰老纯粹是生理过程”的直觉，提醒读者社会期待和自我认知如何塑造我们变老的方式，对任何担心年龄的人都有启发。
HN 评论精选
从生化角度解释：心态变化通过激素水平影响身体状态
我怀疑他们感觉更有活力，是因为心态和环境的变化改变了他们的生化状态。我们的感受和自我认知会影响睾酮、皮质醇、血清素等水平——哪怕五分钟的对话就能让睾酮提升 30% 以上，而感觉自己被视作高地位也会改变血清素。这些激素反过来让人更有活力。所以谁知道真正原因是什么……也许是和陌生人更多的社交？或者只是心态被放到了一个不同的、更好的地方？
michalu查看英文原文
I suspect the reason they felt better and more vital is that the change of mindset and environment altered their biochemistry. How we feel and what we think of ourselves affects our levels of Testosterone, Cortisol, Serotonin, etc. Even a 5 minute conversation can give you a T boost of 30%+ ... or believing that you're perceived as high status alters your Serotonin. Those hormones in turn make you more vital. So who knows what was the reason... maybe more social interaction with strangers? Or simply putting their mind into a different, better place? http://www.ulm.edu/~palmer/TheBiochemistryofStatusandtheFunctionofMoodStates.htm http://www.cep.ucsb.edu/topics/courtship/roney%20et%20al_2009_proceedings%20b.pdf
变老很大程度是社会规训，而非生理必然
有意思的是看看这其中多少是真正的生理因素，多少来自社会和情境的规训。二十多岁时我能做的很多事（比如拒绝坐燃油车、拒绝用一次性餐具），到了三十多岁就做不了了，因为周围人会觉得我是个固执的傻子，危及尚未站稳的事业。工作时间我基本被迫“正常”、套进社会的模子里，只有晚上和周末才能做自己。
dheera查看英文原文
It would be interesting to see how much of this is truly biological and how much of it is due to societal and situational conditioning. There were lots of things I could do in my 20s (e.g. refuse to use gasoline-powered city transportation, refuse to patronize places that used disposable cutlery, refuse to use non-free software, etc.) that I can't do when I'm in my 30s because people around me would think I'm a stubborn idiot, jeopardizing my career at a point where I have not yet established myself. It's very easy to tell a colleague, advisor, anyone at school that you're going to bike to the destination or take electric-powered transit [because you don't believe in a fossil fuel future]. It's very difficult to say the same thing to an investor, co-founder, employee, customer, or whoever is offering you a ride in their car, without feeling like an ass. I'm basically forced to be "normal" during work times and fit into the mould of society. I can only be myself on evenings and weekends. I can only imagine how much more "being normal" I need to do if I had kids, pets, tenants, or whatever. I don't have any of those at the moment. The other night I was pondering over potential improvements to our music and mathematical notation systems while staring at the Milky Way. (I didn't come to anything conclusive, but I love thinking outside the boxes that society defines for us.) 10 years ago, I could truly be myself 24 hours a day. I was basically learning all kinds of things about the world by doing that. Now, I only get about 5 hours a day to be myself. The rest of the time, I need to conform. The lack of "me" time itself may be contribute to some degree of mental rot/aging, apart from the biological component.
老年亲历者：保持对新事物的好奇心是抗老关键
七十多岁的老人现身说法：身体衰退没什么办法，但唯一容易带进老年的（只要没有失智或重病）是协调性——人可以虚弱却依然优雅。至于心态，关键看它何时“冻结”：如果你总拿现在和“过去的好时光”比较，那多半已经迷失；但只要对新事物还有胃口（比如 Hacker News），就还有希望。
every查看英文原文
Old person here (+7 decades). Not much you can do about physical deterioration. The only thing I've found you can easily carry into old age is (assuming no senility or debilitating disease) coordination. One can be weak and frail yet still somewhat graceful. As for the mind, it depends on when it freezes in time. If you find yourself comparing everything current to the "good old days", then you are probably lost. But as long as you have an appetite for the new and unfamiliar (maybe something like ycombinator) then there is possibly still hope...
质疑该经典实验缺乏可重复性
这个研究被复制过吗？每次看到心理学研究被记者写成流行文章，我都会起疑心。
RcouF1uZ4gsC查看英文原文
> psychologist Ellen Langer and her students carefully refurbished an old monastery in Peterborough, New Hampshire, to resemble a place that would have existed two decades earlier. They invited a group of elderly men in their late 70s and early 80s to spend a week with them and live as they did in 1959, Has this study been replicated? Every time I see a psychology study that is used as the basis of some popular article by some journalist, I get suspicious.
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