In an era of information overload, genuinely fresh news and concepts can occasionally get obscured by the “slop.” But eventually, thought-expanding data and perspectives rise to the surface and into wider public attention. This appears to be the case with a Yale University study on aging in America published in an academic journal in early March.

The findings of “Aging Redefined,” now being reported in mainstream media, defy – and can help redefine – long-held and limiting views about the United States’ older demographic. Collecting data on some 11,000 participants over a 12-year period, the researchers found that nearly half of American adults age 65 or older became physically stronger, mentally more acute, or both.

“If this finding was extrapolated to the entire US population, it would suggest that more than 26 million older persons are experiencing [such] improvement,” the study’s authors noted.

A key contributing factor to these enhanced abilities? An outlook that counters traditional “age beliefs,” the ingrained attitudes or theories that equate growing older with growing less capable. Those who held positive expectations of themselves and what future years might bring showed better life outcomes.

“Most people are thinking about aging all wrong,” is how Washington Post columnist Leana S. Wen put it this week, referring to the study. “People need to know that improvement in later life is a common experience.”

“Changing attitudes will be challenging,” Dr. Wen acknowledged, but is “essential” for improving the well-being of ordinary Americans.

Becca Levy, one of the study’s two main authors, has previously noted that “age stereotypes [are] absorbed from culture” – such as advertisements and social media. By the same token, new information and messaging can help modify or entirely erase such limiting perceptions.

And in societies where the share of older citizens is expanding, breaking out of ageist modes of thought is a boon to communities and multigenerational individuals who have much to give and to gain from each other.

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There is a need “to redefine aging so that it includes the possibility of improvement,” Dr. Levy and her co-author wrote. As the Yale University news service reported, the authors “hope their findings will reverse the popular perception that continuous decline is inevitable.”

More than a century ago, the founder of the Monitor, Mary Baker Eddy, encouraged a similar shift in thought. Instead of measuring or outlining life and its possibilities by “solar years,” she urged, “Let us then shape our views of existence into loveliness, freshness, and continuity, rather than into age and blight.”