Days of youth are the happiest times of your life, right? Wrong, says a study by researchers from VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System in Michigan. According to the study, older people are happier and more contented with life than their younger counterparts.
“In our culture, we think of old age as a time of helplessness, disability, loneliness and isolation, none of which are necessarily true,” said Heather Pond Lacey, the lead author of the study. Under the study, Lacey and her team developed an online survey and quizzed 542 people of varying age groups and races how happy and content they were with their lives.
The subjects had to rate their levels of happiness on a scale of one to 10, with 10 being the happiest. Of the 542, 273 were between the ages of 21 and 40 years, while 269 fell in the 60 to 86 age group. Around 50 per cent of the respondents, which included African Americans and Hispanics, were females.
An analysis of the results showed that the average level of happiness among those in the 21-40 group was 6.65 but among those between 60 and 86 was 7.32. “Our stereotypes about aging being an unhappy time of life are not correct... you have a lot of good times left in front of you. We're probably better off expecting good things out of our futures,” Lacey said.
Both groups, however, could not correctly gauge how happy the other group would be. In line with common beliefs, youngsters thought older people would be unhappier while older ones thought youngsters would be happier than them. “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',” Lacey said. The reasons for the findings were not analyzed. “(Older people) seem to get better at managing our moods - the 'don't-sweat-the-small-stuff' kind of idea,” Lacey speculated.
Strangely, even though they believed that with age came lesser happiness, most subjects themselves didn't feel they were becoming less happy as they grew older. “We often make judgments about ourselves that are more positive than the judgments we make about other people,” the lead author said.
One limitation of the study, however, was that it surveyed seniors who were internet users, and so, probably belonged to better economic strata. This excludes those who are reclusive and ailing. “That's a very real problem, something we worried about,” she said, but added that this wasn't the first study to show older was happier. Many studies have also shown that people accept their illnesses and miseries and learn to be happy in spite of odds.
“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,” said Peter Ubel, director of the Center for Behavioral and Decision Sciences in Medicine.
Hailing the study, University of Texas' Sealy Center on Aging director Dr James S Goodwin said aging was misunderstood by the younger lot. “But I'm not sure we should be that concerned about that. It's a fairly harmless bias, as biases go. They will figure it out eventually,” he said.
The results of the study have been published in
Journal of Happiness Studies
