Expectations, mindsets, and self-perceptions can all significantly account for the rate at which the physiological age-related deterioration creeps in (e.g., by accelerating or slowing it down). Despite this aspect leads to consider the aging trajectory as a suitable example of the placebo/nocebo effect, evidence is lacking as to whether a placebo in its strict meaning (i.e., an inert substance described as having therapeutic properties) can improve general health status in the elderly. The aim of the present study is to investigate whether a placebo either disguised as a multivitamin supplement (i.e., deceptive placebo) or honestly described as an inert substance (i.e., open-label placebo) can positively influence psychological, cognitive and physical outcomes in a sample of healthy older adults. Ninety older adults aged over 65 were randomly assigned to 3 groups: (1) a Deceptive Placebo group (DP), who received instructions to take the placebo pills, described as multivitamin supplements, every morning for three weeks (2) an Open Label Placebo group (OLP), who received the same instructions, yet with a honest disclosure that the pills lacked of any active component, and along a persuasive rationale about the power of the placebo effect; and (3) a no treatment Control group (C), who received no manipulation. The main outcome measures were perceived stress, verbal short term memory, and physical functioning. Results indicate that only the OLP group showed a significant reduction in perceived stress from the baseline to the test session (after three weeks), with stress scores being lower in the OLP group than in both the DP and C groups at the test session. Moreover, both the DP and OLP groups showed an improvement in Digit Span scores (verbal short term memory) after three weeks of placebo treatment, and scores at the test session were significantly higher in the OLP group as compared to the C group. As to the physical domain, only the DP and OLP groups showed significant improvements in physical performance from baseline to test over three weeks. These findings suggest that open label placebos may be equally, if not more, effective than deceptive placebos for improving older adults’ general health status and could pave the way for a reliance on OLP paradigms to promote older adults’ sense of control over their own aging trajectories.

Background: Promoting healthy aging in an ageing society is a global priority, which should also take into account people’s views of aging (VoA). The starting point and aim (Task 2.3, WP2, Spoke 4) was to examine views of cognitive aging (VoCA) by developing a new questionnaire on both generalized and personal VoCA, and by exploring its multidimensional relationships with the cognitive and psychological functioning. Methods: A sample of 552 healthy adults aged 50–84 years completed the VoCA, classical VoA measures (i.e. felt age, Attitudes Toward Own Aging, Awareness of Age-Related Change), cognitive tasks (working memory; attention; processing speed), psychological questionnaires (loneliness, resilience, quality of life), and the cognitive reserve survey. Results: Factor analyses showed a bifactorial structure for the generalized and personal VoCA regarding beliefs about cognitive aging either as a fixed, inevitable process (Essentialism, VoCA-E), or a malleable, modifiable process (NonEssentialism, VoCA-NE), with good psychometric properties. Regression analyses showed that stronger VoCA–NE were associated with cognitive domains -working memory and processing speed, while lower personal VoCA–E predicted better working memory. Fewer generalized VoCA and, to some extent, personal VoCa were associated with reduced loneliness. VoCA-NE predicted greater resilience, while generalized VoCA and personal VoCA-NE were linked to better quality of life. VoCA were also associated with current and retrospective cognitive reserve proxies. Conclusions and Implications: The VoCA can be considered a promising and valid tool to assess views of cognitive aging, offering insights to promote active and healthy aging presenting screening campaigns and interventions including it.

In this article, we present three studies designed to investigate the psychometric properties of the Regulatory Emotional Self-efficacy Scale at Work (RESE-W). Study 1 (N = 1735) tested and confirmed a bifactorial structure comprised of one general and two specific dimensions across the six scale items. In Study 2 (N = 211), we investigated the relations of the RESE-W with emotional dynamics at work by estimating its associations with emotional variability, inertia, granularity, and baseline levels. In Study 3 (N = 294), we examined the scale's convergent and external validity, as well as the incremental predictive value of the RESE-W compared to other measures of emotional regulation abilities. Results supported the validity of the instrument and its utility in predicting individuals’ emotional functioning within applied settings.

In modern human societies, social interactions and pro-social behaviours are associated with better individual and collective health, reduced mortality, and increased longevity. Conversely, social isolation is a well-known risk factor for morbidity and mortality. However, the biological processes through which sociality modulates aging are still poorly understood. This study synthesizes current evidence from evolutionary biology, anthropology, genetics, and epigenetics, offering an integrative perspective on how social dynamics influence lifespan and healthy aging. We conducted a comprehensive literature analysis, systematically examining studies linking sociality and aging across different field of studies. We first review major aging theories that incorporate social dimensions, including kin selection, intergenerational transfers, life-history theory, and gene-culture coevolution models. We then examine evidence from comparative evolutionary biology and bioanthropology demonstrating how sociality contributes to natural variation in lifespan across animal models and among human populations in both pre-industrial and post-industrial societies. Importantly, we highlight that certain evolutionary conserved biological mechanisms — particularly involving neuroendocrine, cardiovascular, and immune pathways — link sociality and aging across animal models, pre-industrial and post-industrial societies. Finally, we examine genetic and epigenetic factors, including emerging evidence on the role of DNA methylation and epigenetic clocks in capturing social influences on biological aging. We conclude that fostering sociality across life stages may represent a key leverage point for promoting healthy aging and mitigating age-related disease risk, underscoring the need for interdisciplinary research integrating social sciences, anthropology, physiology, and genomics to inform evidence-based aging policies.

SHORT ABSTRACT

This contribution presents findings from an interdisciplinary study involving 34 older adults (aged 75 and older) living in two rural municipalities of Piacenza (Emilia-Romagna, Italy). The research explored their experiences, needs, and narratives in relation to ageing, using a framework grounded in educational studies (specifically, adult education and educational gerontology). Drawing on the “doing transitions” framework and informed by critical systemic perspectives, the study frames learning in later life as a situated, relational, and transformative process, unfolding through everyday micro-transitions. While the broader study addressed multiple levels (i.e., micro, meso, and macro), this analysis focuses on the micro level, highlighting how older adults make sense of their lives through subtle shifts in identity, agency, care, and expectations.

Using a mixed deductive–inductive thematic analysis, we identified biographical processes that redefine later life not as decline, but as a space of biographicity and co-evolution. These micro-transitions include changes in routines, bodily rhythms, material and relational losses, and redefinitions of everyday gestures. The contribution challenges normative narratives of active ageing and dominant models of individual, linear, and skill-oriented learning. Instead, it proposes a systemic, co-adaptive view of learning as emerging from vulnerability, interdependence, and the slow, often invisible reorganizations of lived experience. As such, we emphasize the ontological dignity of older adults as active participants in meaning-making and identity work, calling for policies and practices that recognize the transformative potential embedded in the ordinary and affirm the complexity of ageing as a dynamic human process.

LONG ABSTRACT

The contribution draws on the outcomes of an interdisciplinary study with older adults in Italian rural areas, investigating their experiences, needs, narratives, and possibilities for a meaningful and positive ageing. The study highlighted the intersection of multiple levels of systemic functioning: the micro (subjective, personal), meso (organizational, relational), and macro (social, political). In this presentation, the authors use a framework from educational studies (adult education and learning, educational gerontology) to interpret learning in and about longevity as a situated, relational and transformative process that unfolds through daily, mundane, and often invisible micro-transitions in later life.

Building on the “doing transitions” approach (Stauber, Walther, & Settersten, 2022) and informed by critical systemic lenses (Braithwaite et al., 2017), the authors propose an interpretative basis for the analysis of biographical narratives from a sample of 34 older adults, aged 75 and more, resident in 2 “inner areas” municipalities of Piacenza (Emilia-Romagna, Italy). Although the interviews were conducted by an interdisciplinary team of researchers from education, sociology, economics, and gerontology—each addressing distinct research questions—this presentation narrows its analytical lens to the micro-level, focusing specifically on the subjective dimension of self-narratives and the ways in which older adults make sense of their experiences in later life.

The interviews were analyzed using a mixed deductive–inductive thematic approach. Initial codes and categories were guided by broader theoretical frameworks (e.g., 'doing transitions'), while remaining attentive to the specificities and nuances identified in each interview. Findings showed micro-transitions in identity, agency, expectations, and care that reframe later life as a space of biographicity (Alheit, 2021), a time to reassess one’s lived experience, relational entanglements, and unrealized possibilities. Learning in and about transitions is different for each person, largely implicit, and situated; however, it is possible to identify similarities and existential dimensions that seem crucial for this phase of life. This focus allows to expand the notion of “transition” beyond demographic, sociological and cultural readings (tending to emphasize the most visible and researched major life events), to interrogate the micro-processes of transitional learning that allow an older adult to keep evolving and to revise her/his relationship to the world, to him/herself, and to others.

This seems to be a requisite to “grow older” – and not just “get older” – (de Guzman, & Laguilles-Villafuerte, 2021), keeping to co-evolve with one’s own environment.

The study focuses the smaller, yet continuous and pedagogically relevant processes of reorganizations of lived experience: the interruption of a routine, changes in bodily rhythms, the loss of material or relational references, or the redefinition of everyday gestures. It brings attention to a paradigmatic shift from the dominant epistemology of individual learning as linear, successful, and performance-oriented, to the systemic processes of co-adaptation that reflect older adults’ ongoing identity negotiation, vulnerabilities, and interdependence. Shedding light on invisible and taken-for-granted micro-transitions, our work aims to recognize the ontological dignity of experiences “where older adults are not isolated or passive recipients of care and services, or self-directed learners eager to ‘acquire new skills’, but active participants in living, meaning-making, problem-solving, and identity-building” (Formenti at al., 2025, p.1521). The study aims at inspiring policies and practices based on older adults’ experience, and on the de-construction of active ageing as a simplified narrative and a mantra of the contemporary society. We advance a framework that goes beyond learning (Biesta, 2006), by recognizing ecological, relational, and non-capitalizable forms of knowledge—those emerging from slowness, interdependence, and everyday life—as meaningful spaces of transformation and contribution in later life.

References

Alheit P. (2021). The transitional potential of ‘biographicity’. Dyskursy Młodych Andragogów, 22, 113-123.

Biesta, G. (2006). Beyond learning: Democratic education for a human future. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers.

Braithwaite, J., Churruca, K., Ellis, L. A., Long, J. C., Clay-Williams, R., Damen, N., Herkes, J., Pomare, C., & Ludlow, K. (2017). Complexity science in healthcare: Aspirations, approaches, applications and accomplishments. Australian Institute of Health Innovation, Macquarie University.

De Guzman, A. B. de, & Laguilles-Villafuerte, S. (2021). Understanding getting and growing older from songs of yesteryears: A latent content analysis. Educational Gerontology, 47(7), 312-323.

Formenti, L., Cino, D., & Loberto, F.R. (2025) Learning in longevity: a critical ecosystemic approach to research and intervention. In Scuola Democratica (Ed.), Proceedings of the Third International Conference of the journal Scuola Democratica. Education and/for Social Justice. Vol. 1: Inequality, Inclusion, and Governance (pp. 1520-1527). Associazione “Per Scuola Democratica”.

Stauber, B., Walther, A. & Settersten, R.A. Jr. (Eds.) (2022). Doing transitions in the life course: Processes and practices. Springer.