Obama at 50: Older, Wiser … Happier?

Slate: Obama at 50: Older, Wiser … Happier?

… Take the 2010 study that looked at more than 340,000 Americans and found that self-reported levels of anger, stress, and worry plummet at 50 and that a few years later, happiness rises. This pattern held true for men and women, married and unmarried, the working and the jobless—and, presumably, for presidents, too.

The exact age at which the shift happens is a matter of some dispute. A study that Slate wrote about in 2007 found 45 to be the average pivot point among Americans and Europeans. (The same study found that for some reason, the age at which happiness increases varies by country. Things start to look up after age 42 in South Africa, whereas Ukrainians have to wait till they pass 62.) But whatever the exact timing, the fact of this mood swing feels counterintuitive: As we near decrepitude, should we not feel gloomier? Our friends are dying, our knees are giving out. What's so great about getting old?

Despite the recent popularity of happiness studies among economists, psychologists, and other social scientists, the cause of the correlation between age and happiness remains somewhat mysterious. Psychiatry professor Arthur Stone of Stony Brook University, who helmed the 2010 study that named age 50 as an emotional turning point, initially figured environmental factors might account for his results. Shouldn't people's growing happiness in their 50s, 60s, and 70s have something to do with the joy of retiring? Or "maybe it's kids going out of the house that changes people's well-being, reduces their stress," Stone told me he had theorized. But when he and colleagues controlled for these and other likely outside factors, the results stayed the same. So what was causing this shift in well-being?

"I don't think that we actually know," Stone said. …

… What is clear from the preponderance of studies, though, is that the compensation for crummy eyesight is rose-colored glasses. Some scholars, pondering the well-being of older people, have begun to wonder whether this facility at regulating emotions might contribute to another ineffable attribute: wisdom. A study out of the University of Michigan presented subjects with sociopolitical conflicts—ethnic tensions in Djibouti, for instance—and found that older people were better at seeing others' points of view, grasping nuanced issues and forging compromise. The young may have all the idealism, but the old seem better equipped to actually fix the world. …