Objective: With the increasing degree of aging in rural areas, how to realize their own value and improve the quality of life has become the focus of the current research on aging theory and the promotion of pension work. From the perspective of positive aging, the study was carried out to explored the effect of social participation on the attitudes to aging and the role of self-efficacy and loneliness in the relationship between social participation and the attitudes to aging of rural elderly. Method: The Social Participate scale, Attitudes to aging questionnaire, the short-form of UCLA Loneliness Scale and General Self-Efficacy Scale were used as measured tools among 170 rural elderly by way of household survey in Kaifeng, Henan Province. After data acquisition, the statistic processing and analysis were conducted in IBM SPSS Statistic 20 software. Specifically, the independent-sample t-test and one-way ANOVA were performed to investigate whether the variables (e.g social participation, self-efficacy, loneliness and aging attitude) are differentiate by demographic information. Subsequently, the Pearson correlation analysis and multi-layer regression analysis were used to test whether the variables are correlated. Further, then SPSS Process v2.16.3 was used for mediation model analysis to explore the associations between these variables. Data analysis results p <.05 was considered statistically significant. Results: The results showed that the social participation, self-efficacy, loneliness and aging attitude of the rural elderly differentiate regard to demographic information such as gender, age, marital status, education and economic income, respectively. And then, the score of loneliness was negatively correlated with social participation (r = -0.50, p < 0.001) , self-efficacy (r = -0.54, p < 0.001) , and both the total score and dimension scores of aging attitude (p s < 0.001); the self-efficacy and social participation had significantly positive correlation with the total score and dimension scores of aging attitude (p s < 0.001). The mediation effect analysis result showed that social participation had a positive role in promoting the attitudes to aging (B = 0.94，SE = 0.14，p < 0.001) . The relationship between social participation and the attitudes to aging was partly mediated by self-efficacy (B = 0.40, SE = 0.09, 95%CI [0.24，0.60]), loneliness (B = 0.27, SE = 0.09, 95%CI [0.12，0.49]) and the chain intermediary effect of self-efficacy and loneliness (B = 0.15, SE = 0.04, 95%CI [0.08，0.26]). Discussion & Conclusion: Social participation can enable individuals to gain identity as a member of a social group, which will provide individuals with social resources and emotional support, and directly or indirectly affect their values, emotions, and healthy behaviors. Therefore, increasing the active social participation of the elderly in rural areas can help to enrich their daily life, enhance their sense of control over the aging process, and maintain the healthy operation of the social support network. Consequently, it contributes to improve the cognition of the elderly to a certain extent, reduce negative emotions, advance the life quality and promote successful aging. The result can provide psychological basis and support for the improvement of the mental health of the rural elderly and the improvement of the pension and social security systems, to a certain extent.