In a study that tracked the emotions of 340,000 adults, Arthur Stone, a professor of psychiatry at Stony Brook University, recently found that happiness drops off in someone’s 20′s and increases again beginning in someone’s 50′s. Stone’s study was based on self report via a Gallup phone survey. His findings factored in the employment, marital and parental status of the participants and found a u-shaped pattern to happiness and aging.
Stone’s finding is in line with Stanford University Professor Laura Carstensen’s theory that younger people make decisions with a forward-looking, aspirational perspective. In a nutshell, young people are goal focused and not focused on your current well being. As you age, according to Carstensen, you shift from looking forward to focusing on smaller things in life like spending time with friends, family and engaging in volunteer work or hobbies. This shift in thought and energy tends to elicit more immediate satisfaction.
In an NPR interview about his study, Stone said that “you are least satisfied with life in middle age or around the 50s and that you are most satisfied in the 20′s and in the 70′s and early 80′s.”
At Engage As You Age we’ve found that Carstensen’s theory holds true with many of the seniors that we work with. The one thing we’d add is that sometimes the introduction of a new activity or conversation partner or friend makes a huge difference. That’s where we come in.
