With age comes happiness

A recent study has shown that reality was different from several misconceptions that people had about aging. A popular misconception among both the young and the old is that the happiest days of people's lives occur when they're young in spite of research having shown the opposite.

Photo: With age comes happiness

While old age was equated with unhappiness for other people, individuals tend to think they'll be happier than most in their old age. In other words older people seem to "mis-remember" how happy they were as youths, just as youths "mis-predict" how happy (or unhappy) they will be as they age.

The research was performed by VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System and University of Michigan researchers involving over 540 adults who were between the ages of 21 and 40, or over age 60.

Each of the participants of the study were asked to rate or predict their own individual happiness at their current age, at age 30 and at age 70, and also to judge how happy most people are at those ages. The results are published in the June issue of the Journal of Happiness Studies, a major research journal in the field of positive psychology, informs Medindia.

"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," lead author Dr. Heather Pond Lacey, University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor, told Reuters Health. "We're probably better off expecting good things out of our futures."

But younger people predicted no decline in their own personal happiness with time. Past research has shown, Lacey noted, that people tend to see themselves as "above average." "We often make judgments about ourselves that are more positive than the judgments we make about other people," she explained.

Among the older people who thought they had been happier in their earlier life, their estimates of past happiness were higher than current happiness self-reports for the younger group. The older group also thought that they were going to be less happy as they aged.

There are a number of theories about why people may get happier as they get older, Lacey noted. For one, people may focus less on achievement and more on personal relationships and enjoying life, and also get better at managing their own moods.

"People are remarkable in their ability to adapt to circumstances, both good and bad, but they are perhaps equally remarkable in their inability to recognize their own adaptation," Lacey and her team conclude, informs Reuters.