Rate My Professor Becca Levy

Becca Levy is Professor of Public Health (Social and Behavioral Sciences) and Psychology at Yale University. She received her Ph.D. in psychology from Harvard University in 1995 and completed a National Institute on Aging postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School in 1998. Her research explores psychosocial factors that influence older individuals’ cognitive and physical functioning as well as their longevity. She is credited with creating a field of study focused on how positive and negative age stereotypes assimilated from culture can have beneficial or adverse effects on the health of older individuals, with studies conducted using longitudinal, experimental, and cross-cultural methods.

Dr. Levy has received numerous awards including the Brookdale National Fellowship for Leadership in Aging, the Baltes Distinguished Research Achievement Award from the American Psychological Association, the Richard Kalish Innovative Publication Award from the Gerontological Society of America, and the Ewald W. Busse Research Award in the Social Behavioral Sciences from the International Association of Gerontology and Geriatrics. She serves as Associate Editor of the Handbook of Psychology of Aging, consulting editor for Psychology and Aging, and on the editorial boards of Stigma and Health, GeroPsych, and Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Science. Dr. Levy has provided invited testimony before the United States Senate on the effects of ageism and contributed to briefs submitted to the United States Supreme Court in age-discrimination cases. Her research has been supported by the National Institute on Aging, the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, the National Science Foundation, and The Patrick and Catherine Weldon Donaghue Medical Research Foundation. She is also the author of the book Breaking the Age Code.