subject: New Research Highlights That Happiness Comes With Age [print this page] New Research Highlights That Happiness Comes With Age
At Stanford University new research from the psychology department recently published highlights that people tend to become more emotionally stable as they age. This translates into not only more productive lives and a positive outlook, but the ability to enjoy "the little things" in life and overall be happier.
This research comes in stark contrast to what many analysts think will lead to a decrease in productivity and health as the baby boom generation hits 60 in the coming years. According to lead researcher Dr. Carstensen and her colleagues, they are absolutely wrong.
According to Carstensen, "as people age we may be seeing a large and growing group of people that are able to discuss in a productive way extremely emotional problems something that we believe will lead to a more stable world."
For the research Dr. Carstensen followed 180 Americans from 1993 to 2005 between the ages of 18 and as old as 94 years of age. To record the data participants were asked to one week, every five years, to carry pagers and respond immediately to a series of questions anytime the pager buzzed. The reason behind the pagers were to be able to access participants at different times during the day and night to periodically assess their mood and outlook on a variety of issues.
This work follows on previous work by Cartensen and others that showed a correlation between age and happiness, but not necessarily causation. Because her group was able to follow the same people for such a long time, they were better able to provide evidence of the trend.
The study results confirmed what the earlier research had shown, that as people age they tend to become both happier, and able to deal with difficult emotional choices in a more "adult" manner. According to the study, some examples were, less emotional stress (things like eating out of control, or negative feelings) from poor test scores, career goals, family issues. Older people seem to be able to better handle the news and have a perspective on the outcome without letting it take control of their life. In other words, older individuals are more aware of what is most important in life and are willing to do what it takes to get there.
"As people get older, they're more aware of dying," according to Carstensen. "So when they see or experience moments of wonderful things, that often comes with the realization that life is fragile and will come to an end. But that's a good thing. It's a signal of strong emotional health and balance."
Carstensen has coined a theory around the change in older people she calls "socio-emotional selectivity"a scientific way of saying that people invest in what's most important to them when time is limited.
