Healthy living
Mind matters
Older and happier
We can all look forward to increasing levels of happiness as the years pass, say US researcher Although the idea that the young are most likely to be happy is accepted by people of all ages, it isn't actually true, according to the authors of the new study, published in the Journal of Happiness Studies. "Overall, people got it wrong, believing that most people become less happy as they age, when in fact this study and others have shown that people tend to become happier over time," says Heather Lacey, PhD.of the University of Michigan Medical School's Center for Behavioral and Decision Sciences in Medicine.
"Not only do younger people believe that older people are less happy, but older people believe they and others must have been happier 'back then'. Neither belief is accurate."
The new study was done using an online survey with six questions, focusing on current, past and expected future levels of happiness.
The volunteers, who were in two age groups: 273 aged between 21 and 40 and 269 aged 60 or more, were asked to rate their own current, past and expected future levels of happiness. They were also asked to say how happy they thought the average 30-year-old and 70-year-old would be.
The senior author of the new paper, Peter Ubel MD said: "People often believe that happiness is a matter of circumstance, that if something good happens, they will experience long-lasting happiness, or if something bad happens, they will experience long-term misery.
"But instead, people's happiness results more from their underlying emotional resources - resources that appear to grow with age. People get better at managing life's ups and downs, and the result is that as they age, they become happier - even though their objective circumstances, such as their health, decline."
Lacey adds, "It's not that people overestimate their happiness, but rather that they learn how to value life from adversities like being sick. What the sick learn from being sick, the rest of us come to over time.</p>
Reader comments
Yes! My wife and I think it is true that older people are happy,we know that we are. For instance, we are resonably well off for money dispite the financial climate at the moment.We managed to weather Mrs. Thatcher's poll tax and the rest of it during the eighties and nineties,so really we can cope with anything the goverment have mind to throw at us' At the moment I am waiting for treatment for a arthritic knee. I would have been worried to death had I been at work wondering how we were going to pay the mortgage and the other bills, as well as feed and clothe three children. Our chidren now have there own homes, and call roundto see us nearly every day as do our grandchildren.
Posted by: E R McMillan | 22/06/2008 23:42:48
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