A Yale researcher found that people with a positive view of ageing lived roughly 7.5 years longer than those who didn't, a figure Yale itself framed as beating exercise and not smoking

A Yale researcher found that people with a positive view of ageing lived roughly 7.5 years longer than those who didn't, a figure Yale itself framed as beating exercise and not smoking

In 2002, a team led by Becca Levy at the Yale School of Public Health reported a result that has been quoted in wellness writing ever since. People who held more positive views of their own ageing lived, on average, about seven and a half years longer than those who held more negative ones. The figure came not from a lab experiment but from following real people across a long stretch of their lives. The paper, Longevity Increased by Positive Sel…