Happiness may increase with age

Although getting older is often associated with more physical ailments and the death of friends or a spouse, a new study finds that as people age they become happier, not sadder. Older men, especially those who are married, are the happiest, according to a study published in the November issue of APA's Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (Vol. 75, No. 5, p. 1333-1349).

'Older adults regulate their emotions more effectively than younger or middle-aged adults,' says Fordham University psychologist Daniel K. Mroczek, PhD, who conducted the study with Christian M. Kolarz, a Fulbright scholar studying in Poland. 'We can propose that older individuals seem to be able to know, through their years of experience, what kind of external events increase or decrease their positive and negative emotions.' While younger people tend to see the future as largely open, older people see the future as being more bounded. As a result, older adults gear their lives toward maximizing positive affect and minimizing negative affect, Mroczek says.

Mroczek and Kolarz examined the responses of 2,727 men and women age 25 to 74 to find out how much a person's age, gender, marital status, education, stress, health and personality affects his or her well-being. They found that negative emotions were highest among young adults and lowest among older adults. Younger participants reported feeling sad, nervous, hopeless or worthless more often than older participants did. Older men reported being the happiest and having the fewest negative emotions.

'Those that were measured as the happiest were not only older and male, but were also married and more extroverted,' Mroczek adds. 'We have seen this before in other research on age and well-being which found that relationships played a major role in determining the extent to which people gain great regulation over their emotions as they age.'

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Successful Midlife Development funded the study, which is part of a large national survey that the foundation conducted to better understand issues affecting adults in their middle years.

-L. Rabasca



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