Social psychologists have proposed a variety of different models to account for people's relative openness to attitude change through the life cycle. Two of the most important models are the impressionable years model, which suggests an especially great openness to change among the young, and the lifelong openness model, which suggests that age is unrelated to openness to attitude change. Two studies were conducted to examine the openness of people of varying ages to attitude change. In both studies, the influence of personal experiences with government agencies on atti- tudes toward government was examined. The attitudes of older people changed as much or more in response to their personal experiences as did those of younger people. These results support the lifelong openness model of attitude change. There are several major perspectives on the relationship be- tween age and openness to attitude change (see Alwin, Cohen, & Newcomb, 1991; Krosnick & Alwin, 1989; Sears, 1981,1983). One important model is the impressionable years model, which suggests that young people are especially open to attitude change. A second model is the lifelong openness model, which suggests that people are equally open to attitude change throughout their lives. The purpose of the studies reported here was to test these two models by examining the relationship between aging and openness to attitude change. The primary currently available source of information about the relationship between aging and attitude change is in studies in which the stability of attitudes over time was examined among different age groups. Such studies show that the atti- tudes of older people are more stable over time than are the attitudes of younger people. Krosnick and Alw~ (1989), for example, reached this conclusion in a sophisticated examina- tion of panel data from the National Election Studies, which included appropriate adjustments for reliability of measure- ment. Alwin, Cohen and Newcomb (1991) reached similar con- clusions from analyses of the Bennington panel study begun by Newcomb and from an examination of panel data from the National Election Studies. These panel studies also suggest that the attitudes of older people are more stable over time. Our concern was with the psychological implications of find-