Researcher Says Higher Emotional Well-Being Reported by Older People (washingtonpost.com) 41
From the Washington Post:
When we are young, our skills tend to improve with age and experience. But once we are well into adulthood, it may start to feel as if it's all downhill. With every advancing year, we become slightly more forgetful, somewhat slower to respond, a little less energetic.
Yet there is at least one important exception: In the emotional realm, older people rule supreme.
For the past 20 years, Susan Turk Charles, a psychologist at the University of California at Irvine, has been monitoring the shifting moods, the sense of satisfaction, the moments of contemplation and the occasional outbursts of anger, sadness and despair of people of all ages — with a special interest in how we handle and experience emotions as we grow older. She and her colleagues have found that, on average, older people have fewer but more satisfying social contacts and report higher emotional well-being.... "I took a class from Laura Carstensen at Stanford, and she was the first to say that there was more development after age 18. She was finding that unlike physical fitness or cognition, where you may see slowing or declines, emotional regulation and experience are often as good, if not better, as we age... Some neuroscientists believe that because we're processing information a little slower with age, that makes us think before we act. We do see a decline with age in overall mass of the brain's frontal lobe, the part that is responsible for emotion regulation, complex reasoning and speed of processing. But researchers also find that older adults often exhibit greater prefrontal cortex activity than younger adults when processing emotions.
"A lot of work has found that older people have a positive bias, even without realizing they're doing this. Their default mode is 'Don't sweat the small stuff.' Older people more often let go of a situation they experience as negative, especially with friends and family. So it is picking their battles that we think older adults are better at..."
Q: Centenarians report overall high levels of emotional well-being. Some may wonder whether it might just be that people who have more positive attitudes, or encounter less adversity, live longer.
"It is true that people with satisfying relationships and positive emotions live longer. Researchers have looked at what could explain this, and they find that psychological well-being is related to lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol and better cardiovascular health."
Asked for suggestions, the researcher proposes an inner strategy that "takes you away from focusing on the future and reminds you that the present moment is the most important."
Yet there is at least one important exception: In the emotional realm, older people rule supreme.
For the past 20 years, Susan Turk Charles, a psychologist at the University of California at Irvine, has been monitoring the shifting moods, the sense of satisfaction, the moments of contemplation and the occasional outbursts of anger, sadness and despair of people of all ages — with a special interest in how we handle and experience emotions as we grow older. She and her colleagues have found that, on average, older people have fewer but more satisfying social contacts and report higher emotional well-being.... "I took a class from Laura Carstensen at Stanford, and she was the first to say that there was more development after age 18. She was finding that unlike physical fitness or cognition, where you may see slowing or declines, emotional regulation and experience are often as good, if not better, as we age... Some neuroscientists believe that because we're processing information a little slower with age, that makes us think before we act. We do see a decline with age in overall mass of the brain's frontal lobe, the part that is responsible for emotion regulation, complex reasoning and speed of processing. But researchers also find that older adults often exhibit greater prefrontal cortex activity than younger adults when processing emotions.
"A lot of work has found that older people have a positive bias, even without realizing they're doing this. Their default mode is 'Don't sweat the small stuff.' Older people more often let go of a situation they experience as negative, especially with friends and family. So it is picking their battles that we think older adults are better at..."
Q: Centenarians report overall high levels of emotional well-being. Some may wonder whether it might just be that people who have more positive attitudes, or encounter less adversity, live longer.
"It is true that people with satisfying relationships and positive emotions live longer. Researchers have looked at what could explain this, and they find that psychological well-being is related to lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol and better cardiovascular health."
Asked for suggestions, the researcher proposes an inner strategy that "takes you away from focusing on the future and reminds you that the present moment is the most important."
I'm Pretty Sure... (Score:3)
I'm pretty sure that studies and researchers have been saying this for a long time.
Seems to be fairly true in most cases for fairly obvious reasons. But, if they got someone to pay out a research grant to rehash this idea, good for them.
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They are idiots. The one and only thing worse than old age, DEATH. When you start from that view point, well, you start to see the humour in life and the humour in all the illusions of the human society which you are not so tightly bound to any more. Either that or you are some nasty old fucker who is being psychological crippled by age, generally the appearance and genitally obsessed crowd, fortunately they are in the minority and their suffering rather an apt punishment for really quite poor behaviour in
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PS How to tell the difference.
Mean Old Person : Youth is wasted on the young.
Happy Old Person : Nahh yah old cunt, it was just wasted on you.
Yes, it's because you realize the key thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
You generally get happier as you get older, because you realize after many years of experience how little other people's opinions matter, on subjects where you own experience has taught you that you are generally correct.
Also, it's a lot easier to be happier when you are older because you have self-confidence built from seeing a lot of crap happen and surviving it, maybe even coming out on top at times. "This too shall pass" is a saying you only truly understand when you are older.
Re:Yes, it's because you realize the key thing... (Score:5, Informative)
But also the current older generations are considerably less fucked than the younger ones. They probably own a house and probably paid off the mortgage. They will die before climate change affects them too much. Got to retire years earlier than their kids will be able to.
The boomers were the last generation to be doing better than their parents.
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So our positiveness is because we're closer to, "well this mess will soon be over".
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So our positiveness is because we're closer to, "well this mess will soon be over".
Unless reincarnation with a local preference is the actual model this works by. In that case, anybody old is pretty much fucked.
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If science is any guide:
There is no soul. A "self" is just a high-level abstraction of all the atoms that happen to be in a human being at that moment. That is a constant flow. We take in new matter and push out out matter throughout the day (including losing skin cells, hair, minerals in sweat, etc.). So, we are constantly reincarnating into other plants, animals, and people on an ongoing basis, little by little, day by day.
Almost 100% of who you were seven years ago has already reincarnated into other
Are they though... (Score:1)
But also the current older generations are considerably less fucked than the younger ones.
I'm not sure that is entirely true.
If the market went down 80% would they in fact be much less fucked?
Older people generally have more, yes, but they also have more to lose - and less flexibility.
If things got really bad someone younger could more easily go live in a different country. They also have more ability to direct their career to a direction that has promise over the next decade... it is harder for older peopl
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On the other hand, most older people have been through at least one period in their life of scarcity so know how to deal with it better than someone who never has. They've probably spent at least one long period of unemployment. They've probably been through at least one major illness or supported someone else through one. They know people who have died, and that some deaths are better than others. In short, they've had the experience to know that no matter how bad shit gets, at some point it will start
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But also the current older generations are considerably less fucked than the younger ones. They probably own a house and probably paid off the mortgage. They will die before climate change affects them too much.
1) Yes, 2) Yes, and 3) Yes, and I'm looking forward to it.
I feel like I probably lived through "Peak America" and I'm not really looking forward to what comes next. .
Got to retire years earlier than their kids will be able to. The boomers were the last generation to be doing better than their parents.
You're not wrong. I mean, it hasn't all been titties and beer, but with all the shit I see happening I'm thankful I'm not in my 20s. You younger folks have a tough fuckin' road ahead and I don't envy you one bit.
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with all the shit I see happening I'm thankful I'm not in my 20s.
What shit are you worrying about here?
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What shit are you worrying about here?
It seems like it's much harder for younger people to gain a foothold, harder to accumulate personal wealth, harder to buy a home, etc etc. Although social mores are getting better and more accepting/inclusive, it also seems like the Rise Of The Cranks is also a thing now.
It's not all bad, but I honestly wouldn't want to be 20 years old in 2021. It just seems like the younger crowd has a really rough road ahead. I hope not, but it sure seems that way to me.
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It seems like it's much harder for younger people to gain a foothold, harder to accumulate personal wealth, harder to buy a home, etc
These things do seem to be true.
On the other hand, if you were getting healthcare at the level you would get in 1960, your doctor might prescribe cigarettes to solve your problems.
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On the other hand, if you were getting healthcare at the level you would get in 1960, your doctor might prescribe cigarettes to solve your problems.
If we were getting healthcare at the level we got in 1960, we could probably afford it.
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Yeah that's definitely something we can fix.
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It's insane that the wealthiest country in the world does not provide even basic healthcare to its citizens.
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In my opinion, on average the younger generation will be considerably better off than the previous generation. There are far more opportunities available for them -- I am not talking money (although that too) .. they will have more travel options, better technology, medical advances, etc.
Look at this graph carefully .. notice that in the 1980s fewer people over age 65 owned their homes. While the under 35 homeownership rate has reduced compared to 1982, it could just be that more people are going to college
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There are also viable opportunities now that simply didn't exist 20 years ago.
Think about it - eSports was barely a thing 20 years ago - sure we heard of Koreans going nuts over StarCraft, but it's become a legitimate career (albeit with the same odds as any other pro sports athlete). 20 years ago, the thought of a "job playing video games" would've brought laughter and the comment to get real.
Then we have "content creator" where producing video and other stuff is such a valid path, people leave their jobs
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The boomers were the last generation to be doing better than their parents.
That's because their parents were largely immigrants, farmers, and other sorts of folks with almost no net worth. Once a family has broken free of that, you should EXPECT each generation to do worse than their parents, because the previous generation has had more time to accumulate wealth. Someone in their 40s SHOULD be doing worse financially than someone in their 70s, for both the reason you mentioned (no mortgage) and others besides (no kids to support, etc.)
And then that oldest generation dies, lea
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Yep.
"I know a few things because I've seen a few things."
One of the downsides to having experience (and hopefully a little wisdom to go with it) is that you almost always know what's gonna happen next.
Not every time, but often enough so that you can just sit back and watch as events take their inevitable course.
Do I intercede or attempt to alter the course? Fuck no, because I've seen how that shit turns out too.
After a while it really does get boring knowing what comes next. The fact is that if you've kept
Focusing on the present instead of the future? (Score:1)
That is the exact opposite of what young people are usually told, where the older demand that they always think of their future instead of focusing on their well-being in the present.
So youngsters, take the psychologist's advice: Spend all your money on today's pleasures, don't consider any future side-effects of taking drugs
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This is certainly on way to read it. And wow, it is completely different from what I took from that statement.
What I saw in it is something along the lines of : register the moment you are in instead of already being lost in a potential future that might not be.
Understanding "Being lost" as "fussing about". For instance sitting at your desk fussing about weekend plans, instead of tackling the task at hand, and focusing on planning the weekend later.
Doing stuff whilst ignoring consequences was nowhere near
Gen X'ers. (Score:2)
Gen X'ers stay out of it.
I have no strong feelings one way or the other.
It's perspective, that's all (Score:3)
Look, when you're young, you inherently have no perspective. Things feel more catastrophic and more scary and more intense. Your first love is intense because you have nothing to compare it to. Same with your first breakup. Everything seems like the end of the world or the beginning of something amazing that nobody else can understand.
By the time you reach your 40s, things have calmed down. You know not everything is a catastrophe. You have some experiences so you don't feel like you're missing out. You may experience one last gasp of this as your midlife crisis hits and you grapple with your mortality, if you didn't do that part already.
But then after you're passed that, you're hopefully in a place where you understand what makes you happy. You know the ups and downs of life so you can just concentrate on enjoying what you have and the time that you have left.
I wish I had all (or even just some!) of these tools when I was a teenager. But youth is wasted on the young, as they say.
At some point... (Score:2)
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To add to your last sentence, "Enjoy to the fullest the good times, there's plenty of time to just keep trudging ahead but you don't get to dance every day."
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Yes. I also attempt to keep St. Carlin's admonition: "Don't sweat the petty stuff and don't pet the sweaty stuff."
Saying the Quiet Part Out Loud (Score:2)
Obviously... (Score:2)
All the unstable ones are dead.
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Mmm. Selection bias, then.
That's why they vote better. (Score:2)