It is inevitable. The muscles weaken. Hearing and vision fade. We get wrinkled and stooped. We can’t run, or even walk, as fast as we used to. We have aches and pains in parts of our bodies we never even noticed before. We get old.
It sounds miserable, but apparently it is not. A large Gallup poll has found that by almost any measure, people get happier as they get older, and researchers are not sure why.
“It could be that there are environmental changes,” said Arthur A. Stone, the lead author of a new study based on the survey, “or it could be psychological changes about the way we view the world, or it could even be biological — for example brain chemistry or endocrine changes.”
The telephone survey, carried out in 2008, covered more than 340,000 people nationwide, ages 18 to 85, asking various questions about age and sex, current events, personal finances, health and other matters.
The survey also asked about “global well-being” by having each person rank overall life satisfaction on a 10-point scale, an assessment many people may make from time to time, if not in a strictly formalized way.
Finally, there were six yes-or-no questions: Did you experience the following feelings during a large part of the day yesterday: enjoyment, happiness, stress, worry, anger, sadness. The answers, the researchers say, reveal “hedonic well-being,” a person’s immediate experience of those psychological states, unencumbered by revised memories or subjective judgments that the query about general life satisfaction might have evoked.
The results, published online May 17 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, were good news for old people, and for those who are getting old. On the global measure, people start out at age 18 feeling pretty good about themselves, and then, apparently, life begins to throw curve balls. They feel worse and worse until they hit 50. At that point, there is a sharp reversal, and people keep getting happier as they age. By the time they are 85, they are even more satisfied with themselves than they were at 18.
In measuring immediate well-being — yesterday’s emotional state — the researchers found that stress declines from age 22 onward, reaching its lowest point at 85. Worry stays fairly steady until 50, then sharply drops off. Anger decreases steadily from 18 on, and sadness rises to a peak at 50, declines to 73, then rises slightly again to 85. Enjoyment and happiness have similar curves: they both decrease gradually until we hit 50, rise steadily for the next 25 years, and then decline very slightly at the end, but they never again reach the low point of our early 50s.
Other experts were impressed with the work. Andrew J. Oswald, a professor of psychology at Warwick Business School in England, who has published several studies on human happiness, called the findings important and, in some ways, heartening. “It’s a very encouraging fact that we can expect to be happier in our early 80s than we were in our 20s,” he said. “And it’s not being driven predominantly by things that happen in life. It’s something very deep and quite human that seems to be driving this.”
Dr. Stone, who is a professor of psychology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, said that the findings raised questions that needed more study. “Theseresults say there are distinctive patterns here,” he said, “and it’s worth some researcheffort to try to figure out what’s going on. Why at age 50 does something seem to start to change?”
The study was not designed to figure out which factors make people happy, and the poll’s health questions were not specific enough to draw any conclusions about the effect of disease or disability on happiness in old age. But the researchers did look at four possibilities: the sex of the interviewee, whether the person had a partner, whether there were children at home and employment status. “These are four reasonable candidates,” Dr. Stone said, “but they don’t make much difference.”
For people under 50 who may sometimes feel gloomy, there may be consolation here. The view seems a bit bleak right now, but look at the bright side: you are getting old.
人的衰老無可避免：肌肉松弛、聽力視力下降、滿臉皺紋、直不起腰，跑步甚至步行都不如從前那么輕盈快捷了。我們身體上某些部位出現(xiàn)了之前未曾感覺到的各種疼痛。我們變老了。
這聽起來似乎非常不幸，但顯然并非如此。一項(xiàng)大規(guī)模蓋洛普民意調(diào)查發(fā)現(xiàn)，幾乎不管從何種角度來衡量，人是越老越快樂，而研究人員對此難以作出解釋。
“或許是因?yàn)槿怂幁h(huán)境的變化，”該調(diào)查的一份最新研究報(bào)告主要作者亞瑟·斯通(Arthur A. Stone)說，“或許可能是我們在看待世界的方式上出現(xiàn)了心理層面的變化，甚至或許可能是出現(xiàn)了生物層面的變化——比如，大腦的化學(xué)組成物質(zhì)或者內(nèi)分泌的變化。”
這項(xiàng)民意調(diào)查是2008年進(jìn)行的一次電話調(diào)查，調(diào)查對象是全美年齡介于18歲至85歲的34萬多人，涉及年齡及性別、時(shí)事、個(gè)人理財(cái)、健康及其他事項(xiàng)等各類問題。
該調(diào)查還對“全球幸福感”進(jìn)行了提問：讓每一位調(diào)查對象用0至10分對總體生活滿意度進(jìn)行評估。許多人可能會偶爾對生活滿意情況暗自加以評估(或許這不算正式方式)。
最后，調(diào)查問卷中還有六個(gè)需回答“是或不是”的問題：你昨天大部分時(shí)間里有沒有經(jīng)歷過如下情緒：愉快、幸福、緊張、憂慮、憤怒、悲傷?研究人員表示，對這些問題的回答能揭示個(gè)人的“快樂幸福感”——即一個(gè)人在這些心理狀態(tài)方面的直接感受，不受有關(guān)總體生活滿意度詢問可能會誘發(fā)的記憶改變或主觀判斷的妨礙。
這份調(diào)查研究報(bào)告于5月17日發(fā)表在《美國國家科學(xué)院院刊》(Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)的網(wǎng)絡(luò)版上。對于老年人及即將邁入老年的人來說，該研究結(jié)果的確是一個(gè)好消息。從全球來看，人從18歲開始就自我感覺良好，然后，顯然就要開始承受生活的各種變化。他們的自我感覺越來越差，直到年至50歲。這時(shí)候，便會出現(xiàn)急劇逆轉(zhuǎn)，人開始越老越快樂。到85歲時(shí)，他們的自我滿意程度超過了18歲時(shí)的程度。
在衡量當(dāng)前幸福感——即昨天的情緒狀態(tài)方面，研究人員發(fā)現(xiàn)，緊張感從22歲開始減少，至85歲時(shí)達(dá)到緊張感的最低點(diǎn)。憂慮感在50歲之前保持相當(dāng)穩(wěn)定，然后急劇降低。憤怒感從18歲起便穩(wěn)步減少，而悲傷感在50歲時(shí)上升到峰值，然后下滑，直至73歲，再然后略微上升，直至85歲。愉快感和幸福感的變化曲線類似：兩者都先逐漸減少，直至50歲，然后在隨后的25年里穩(wěn)步增長，最后略微下降，但不再會達(dá)到50歲時(shí)的最低點(diǎn)。
其他專家對此研究成果印象深刻。英國華威商學(xué)院(Warwick Business School)心理學(xué)教授安德魯·奧斯瓦爾德(Andrew J. Oswald)曾發(fā)表過幾篇有關(guān)人類幸福的研究報(bào)告，他認(rèn)為此項(xiàng)研究成果具有重大價(jià)值，而且在某些方面令人鼓舞�！拔覀兛梢云谕�80歲時(shí)比在20歲時(shí)更加快樂，這是一個(gè)非常令人鼓舞的事實(shí)，”他說，“而且這基本上不受生活中所發(fā)生的事情所左右。起主導(dǎo)作用的似乎是某種深層次的、人類本性的因素�！�
斯通博士在美國紐約州立大學(xué)石溪分校(State University of New York at Stony Brook)擔(dān)任心理學(xué)教授，他說此項(xiàng)研究結(jié)果提出了一些需要進(jìn)一步研究的問題。“這些研究結(jié)果表明，存在一些獨(dú)特的變化模式，”他說，“值得花些功夫研究一番，看看到底是怎么一回事。為什么50歲的時(shí)候，某些影響情緒的因素會開始發(fā)生變化?” 更多信息請?jiān)L問：https://www.24en.com/
這項(xiàng)研究并不是為了探究使人類快樂的相關(guān)因素而設(shè)計(jì)的，而且該調(diào)查問卷中提出的有關(guān)健康的問題也不夠具體，不足以在疾病或傷殘對晚年幸福感的影響問題上作出任何有效結(jié)論。但研究者確實(shí)探究了可能影響人快樂的四個(gè)因素：受訪者的性別、是否有配偶、家里是否有孩子以及就業(yè)狀況�！坝兴膫�(gè)合乎情理的可能因素，”斯通博士說，“但是這些因素并沒有對快樂產(chǎn)生太大的差別�！�
對于那些有時(shí)情緒憂郁的50歲以下的人來說，該研究或許給他們一些安慰。目前你似乎有點(diǎn)感覺沮喪無助，但是，想想高興的事吧：你正逐漸變老，向幸福的老年期邁進(jìn)呢。