How to age well

It is a sad fact that for many of us the prospect of getting old is quite scary. We look around and see old people hobbling slowly along the street and we look away. We think of retirement homes with distaste, if not with outright horror. Is that what will happen to us? Will we become old and sick and unable to function normally? We can hardly bear to think about it.

Of course, if we do think about it we can all identify old people who are mentally and physically active and lead satisfying lives. But it seems a matter of chance - some are lucky, some are not. Better not to dwell on it.

However, it is not a matter of chance - it's not about genes or bad luck, or being born into the wrong family. Studies by George Vaillant (2004) of the same people over 60 years show that aging well can be attributed to certain controllable factors, and they are not the ones we might think that they are.

He defined positive aging as consisting of six dimensions:

1. absence of objective physical disability as rated by a doctor
2. subjective physical health as rated by the person themselves
3. length of undisabled life - whether the person had lost any years before age 80 to actual or perceived disability
4. objective mental health as rated by success in work, love, play, and avoiding psychiatric care
5. objective social supports - good connections with wife, children and grandchildren, siblings, playmates (eg golf, tennis, sailing) and social networks (clubs, etc) as rated by others
6. subjective life satisfaction as rated by the person themselves

He used these dimensions to classify over 500 subjects from different class backgrounds (college and inner-city) along a continuum that ranged from "happy-well" to "sad-sick" at age 70-80. The happy-well tended to have high ratings in most or all of these dimensions; those with low ratings were more likely to be sad-sick, or had died before age 70-80. Then he looked at factors that had been measured earlier in their lives to see what contributed to this rating.

First let's look at what did not predict positive aging. The happy-well did not have longer-lived ancestors, higher cholesterol, higher social class, warmer childhoods, more stable childhood temperaments, or higher stress than the sad-sick. Contrary to what we would believe, better genes, low cholesterol, social class, upbringing, temperament and stress-free living do not contribute significantly to a healthy and happy old age.

So what did contribute to a happy and healthy old age? Each of the following variables were shown to lead to a positive old age, regardless of social class or other factors:

1. Not being a smoker or stopping smoking before age 45. Not smoking heavily before age 50 was the single best predictor of healthy aging, but if they quit smoking completely before age 45 the effect at 70-80 was much the same.
2. Using adaptive coping styles. Coping styles involve the use of defense mechanisms to deal with stressful situations. We all use them, but some, such as humour, altruism and stoicism are "more mature" than others such as denial and passive-aggression. It is more adaptive, and healthier, to laugh at misfortune than to deny it is happening.
3. Not abusing alcohol. Alcohol abuse was defined as "the evidence of multiple alcohol-related problems" with family, work, health, and the law.
4. Healthy weight. Weight was measured using the body mass index (BMI). Being overweight (BMI> 28) or underweight (BMI<22) class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">positive aging.
5. Stable marriage. Getting to age 50 without divorce, separation or serious problems contributed to positive aging.
6. Exercise. Regular exercise of more than 500 kilocalories per week was required.
7. Years of education. Those with higher education tended to stop smoking, eat sensibly and drink in moderation because they were higher in self-care, future orientation and perseverance.

This is great news for all of us. All of these factors are controllable - we can ensure that we remain healthy and happy into old age just by controlling our smoking, alcohol consumption, weight and exercise, and by working on ourselves and our marriages to cope better with stress and setbacks. The fact that a higher education makes us more likely to do these things should not stop us just because we didn't go on to college or university.



Sources:

Christopher Peterson. (2006). A Primer in Positive Psychology. New York: Oxford University Press.

Vaillant, George E. (2004). Positive Aging. In P. Alex Linley & Stephen Joseph (Eds.), Positive psychology in practice (pp.561-578). New York: Wiley.

Are you a maximizer or a satisficer?

One thing you can say without fear of contradiction about the modern world is that we have more choice than ever before. Choice about careers; lifestyles; which city or suburb to live in; which house to buy; which car to buy; which school to send our kids to; which university to go to ourselves; which supermarket to shop in; which clothes to wear; which washing powder to buy; how to have our coffee; a never-ending list of choices assail us everywhere we go. How do we make these choices?

Research by psychologist Barry Schwartz from Swarthmore College in the States has shown that people consistently make choices in different ways. Some are maximizers – they keep looking until they have found the best possible choice among all of the alternatives. Others are satisficers – they search until they have found a choice that is good enough and then stop. People are all somewhere along this continuum, so some are more maximizers (more obsessive!) than others, and some satisficers are less selective than others. Where are you?

Comparing myself and my husband I have to say that I am a maximizer and he is a satisficer. When we are shopping for new spectacles, for example, I find a pair of spectacles I like and then I keep looking to see if there is anything better that I like more. He will find one that he likes, presumably that meets the criteria he had set, and buys them then and there. We constantly amaze (and annoy) each other to the point where it’s better if we don’t go shopping together.

Which decision style is better? Schwarz found that maximizers spent longer making a decision, as you would expect, but then they were less satisfied with their choices than the satisficers. Satisficers make a decision, are satisfied with the decision, and then move on. Maximizers, perhaps, are still looking around afterwards to see if they could have made a better choice even after it is too late. Satisficers are happier.

If you have identified yourself as a maximizer, how can you be more satisfied with the choices you make? Well, for a start, you might try to be more selective about which decisions you agonise over. If you are spending more than five minutes choosing a birthday card or a washing powder then perhaps you are not valuing your own time sufficiently. Keep the agonizing for the big decisions – the choice of schools, jobs, homes, partners, and set yourself goals for the small decisions to choose within a set time limit or within a restricted range.

Source:

Christopher Peterson, A Primer in Positive Psychology. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.

How optimistic are you?

Optimism has been broadly defined as the expectation that things will go well in the future. It can be broken down in terms of how an individual explains the causes of good and bad events. Optimists explain bad events as having external, unstable and specific causes (This exam was really hard) and good events as having internal, stable and global causes (I'm really good at this subject).

Pessimists are the opposite - they explain bad events as having internal, stable and global causes (I'm no good at exams) and good events as having external, temporary and specific causes (The exam was easy this time). Optimism has been shown to have a positive effect on health, sporting success, work success, avoiding depression and other mood disorders. You can test your optimism and pessimism yourself at http://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/.

We can also distinguish between Little Optimism and Big Optimism. Little Optimism is about the small things in life, like whether I will be able to find a parking spot. Big Optimism is about broader, more general things, like whether the world will solve the greenhouse gas problem. Little Optimism may directly influence your behaviour and lifestyle choices, whereas Big optimism may influence your general mood, and perhaps your immune system.


It is possible to have different levels of the two types of optimism, and different expectations about different types of goals. You may be optimistic about the future, and so don't see the need to recycle, but pessimistic about whether you will get a parking spot or get the promotion at work.


Are optimistic people happier? If you are working towards your goals in the expectation that you will achieve them then I would argue that you are. If you consider all effort to be hopeless then you won't aspire to reach goals and you won't even try try to achieve them. I was at uni in the early 1980s when we all thought there would be a nuclear war at any moment, and I'm sure that expectation did nothing to help us do well at uni.

We can learn to be more optimistic. Martin Seligman advocates disputing your pesimistic beliefs and expectations, and if you do this enough it replaces the habits you learned when you were younger. He also recommends teaching optimism to your children by letting them master tasks on their own and showing them that their actions have consequences - not just negative consequences, but positive ones as well.

Seligman gives a lovely example of the gales of laughter his daughter produces when they play the game of banging on the table - she bangs once on the table, everyone else at the table bangs on the table. She then bangs three times on the table, and then so does everyone else. She is learning that she can have an effect on the people she loves, and that that she matters to them.

Surely optimism, and general happiness, is made of stuff like this.

Sources:

Christopher Peterson, A Primer in Positive Psychology. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Martin E.P. Seligman, Learned Optimism. Sydney: Random House, 1992.

Martin E.P. Seligman, Authentic Happiness. Sydney: Random House, 2002.

The Happiness Formula

BBC World's The Happiness Formula

[I'm writing this as I watch the program on cable TV].

Measuring activity in the brain by oxygen levels when shown a happy or sad picture shows that happiness can be detected directly in the brain ..... or is it pleasure? Is pleasure and happiness the same thing? And does it last? Or is happiness something deeper and more lasting than mere pleasure?

Can you just ask people to rate their own happiness and get a valid result? Professor Ed Diener, psychologist and researcher into happiness, thinks we can. He finds that the happiest people in the world are the Swiss, and those in Belarus are the least happy. Happy countries are richer and democratic, but their happiness is not so much greater than poor, non-democratic ones.

[Why democratic, I wonder? Do we prefer to have some perception of control over our lives that democracy theoretically gives us? This is a question for another time, I think].

Measuring happiness in this way predicts outcomes in peoples' lives. Are they more likely to commit suicide if they are less happy? Surprisingly, yes! Can someone who scores less on the happiness scale keep his hand in iced water for as long as someone who scored higher? The answer turns out to be no! So are happy people more persistent, more resilient, more likely to succeed in life? Perhaps extrapolating from iced water experiments are pushing the whole thing too far, but it is easy to see how it could work.

Another study, of nuns interviewed a few years ago, found that those who sounded happier in interviews lived longer than the less happy ones, up to 9 years longer. This is not something to be sneezed at! And another one, of performance during memory exercises, showed that people who are pampered a bit more are able to remember objects better.

Professor Layard, an economist, has come to the conclusion that money doesn't make us happy. Striving to make more money doesn't make us happier, and perhaps it makes us less happy when we are constantly comparing ourselves to others. Bhutanese polititians measure Gross Domestic Happiness rather than Gross Domestic Product, and make decisions according to whether people will be happier rather than richer. Plastic bags have been banned (not a bad idea). Bhutan is not as rich as it might have been, but the people are happier.

What do we need for lasting happiness? Not endless consumption, but volunteering is what gives our lives meaning, and meaning is necessary for real, lasting, happiness. Happy people volunteer, and volunteers are happier. They also are more likely to get married, stay married, become leaders and help others at work, and have better health, says Ed Diener.

A survey asking whether governments should aim to make us richer or happier, the overwhelming majority went for happiness.

[What would you choose? Will you wait for the government to do something, or will you do it yourself?]

Stay tuned for the next episode in this excellent series on BBC World.