Verified Document

Age-Associated Well-Being Remains A Mystery Age And Essay

Age-associated Well-Being Remains a Mystery Age and Happiness

Global and hedonic well-being may represent a potentially valuable social indicator, but little is understood about the underlying causal factors. The best predictor of well-being that has been identified so far is age, in that self-reported well-being begins to improve during mid adulthood. In an attempt to discover the underlying factors controlling well-being the data from a large survey were stratified by age and then analyzed for possible confounding factors. The strong association between age and well-being was confirmed with a high degree of confidence, but failed to detect any evidence of a causal association between gender, relationship status, raising children, or employment status. Although maturity-related traits, such as increased wisdom and affect regulation, have been proposed in the past to explain the age-associated increase in well-being, the sharp slope deflection points and the U-shape of the curve are inconsistent with these explanations.

Age-Associated Well-Being Remains a Mystery

Introduction

Global and psychological (hedonic) well-being has been suggested to be a way for quantifying the overall psychological health of a nation (reviewed in Stone, Schwartz, Broderick, and Angus, 2010). Global well-being represents an individual's overall assessment of their lives, while hedonic well-being is used to measure a person's average mood (affect) or attitude concerning their current life (affect).

Previous studies have found that once a person is transitioning through middle age their global assessment improves (reviewed in Stone, Schwartz, Broderick, and Angus, 2010). This improvement is unrelated to generational differences in terms of experience and not limited to Western...

Studies examining affect means for populations also revealed less frequent negative moods with age, but the intensity for either negative or positive moods, or the frequency of positive moods, were uncorrelated with age. To better understand the relationship between age and well-being, Stone and colleagues (2010) analyzed the data from a large phone survey that interrogated study subjects about their global and hedonic well-being.
Results

The Gallup Organization telephone survey was conducted in 2008 and of the respondents, 340,847 met the inclusion criteria for the current study (Stone, Schwartz, Broderick, and Angus, 2010). The age range was 18 to 85, with an average age of 47.3 years, and males constituted 48% of the respondents. The hedonic well-being items included enjoyment, happiness, stress, worry, sadness, and anger, while the global well-being was assessed by the ladder method, where the top of a 10-step ladder represents the best life imaginable.

Global well-being was found to decrease rapidly as people entered young adulthood and then more slowly up to the age of 53 (Stone, Schwartz, Broderick, and Angus, 2010). After the age of 53, global self-assessment gradually returned to the same levels reported for late adolescence by age 85. Correcting for the covariates of gender, living with a partner, raising children, or being unemployed did not change the overall pattern or values significantly.

The positive affect items, enjoyment and happiness, had roughly the same pattern, but the range across age groups was much smaller. Late adolescents were happy and enjoying life about 90% of the time, but decreased to almost 80% for early and middle adult years before returning to near 90%. The age-associated changes in negative emotions did not follow this…

Sources used in this document:
References

Stone, Author A., Schwartz, Joseph E., Broderick, Joan E., and Deaton, Angus. (2010). A snapshot of the age distribution of psychological well-being in the United States. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107, 9985-9990.

Cartensen, Laura L., Fung, Helene, H., and Charles, Susan T. (2003). Socioemotional selectivitiy theory and the regulation of emotion in the second half of life. Motivation and Emotion, 27, 103-123.
Cite this Document:
Copy Bibliography Citation

Related Documents

Nok Culture the Mystery of the Nok
Words: 2714 Length: 6 Document Type: Term Paper

Nok Culture The Mystery of the Nok Culture Only within the last century years has the Western world realized the extent of civilization present in ancient Africa. Up until this time, and throughout most of the colonization of Africa, Europeans had been able to overlook the remarkable civilizations of this continent, quietly believing that the only artifact-producing ancient civilizations were isolated in such known locations as Greece, Rome, Egypt, and the Middle

Integrating Critical As Well As
Words: 1759 Length: 4 Document Type: Term Paper

(Eljamal; Stark; Arnold; Sharp, 1999) To conclude, it be said that if we will not be able to master imparting the capability to think in a developed form, our profession, as well as perhaps our world, would be influenced and taken over by someone who would be able to outsmart us to find it out. We would in that case not only remain thinking as to what happened but would

Origen Remains One of the
Words: 4907 Length: 18 Document Type: Thesis

260). This cosmological discussion is one reason Origen is said to have "created, indeed embodied, the first model of a scientific theology;" his approach to the notion of metempsychosis, like nearly all of his theological work, is rooted in a steadfast determination to distinguish "between the dogmata of the church tradition and the problemata which were to be discussed" according to reason, logic, and a prototype of the scientific

King Tut's Curse the Mummy's Curse and
Words: 1327 Length: 4 Document Type: Essay

King Tut's Curse The Mummy's Curse and King Tutankhamen When Howard Carter uncovered King Tutankhamen's tomb in 1922, nobody expected that the historical significance of the find would be plagued by the rumor of a curse. King Tutankhamen's tomb was discovered in the Valley of the Kings near Luxor in Egypt on November 4, 1922 (Handwerk, n.d.). On February 17, 1923, after months of excavation, Carter, and approximately 20 other people, gathered

Minor's "Understanding Faculty Senates: Moving
Words: 1539 Length: 5 Document Type: Thesis

That is, in proposing this model, Minor wanted to encourage further discussion on the topic of faculty participation in university governance in a way that would stimulate conversation that could yield results. Other researchers may want to modify Minor's models after creating some sort of algorithm that can help them become more scientific. Other ways in which researchers might build on Minor's research include investigations into the appropriate function

Theology Sacraments Are Traditional Rites That Are
Words: 1686 Length: 4 Document Type: Essay

Theology Sacraments are traditional rites that are recognized as having a particular significance or importance. There are seven sacraments and baptism is on of them, it is the first of the three sacraments of initiation. Baptism involves the use of water symbolically and leads to the admission of a person into a community of believers. Baptism is based on John the Baptist practice where he baptized people including Christ. Baptism now

Sign Up for Unlimited Study Help

Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.

Get Started Now