More than 400 studies have been recently analyzed to reveal how people feel throughout their lives. It may seem easy to evaluate happiness throughout life, but it has puzzled experts for quite a long time.
Now, a team of researchers from various universities, including the German Sport University Cologne, Ruhr University Bochum, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, and the universities of Bern and Basel in Switzerland, has come even closer to an answer.
They shared their findings in an extensive review published on September 7, 2023 in the journal Psychological Bulletin.
They discovered that people’s overall life satisfaction is lower in childhood before increasing later in life. In late adulthood, there is once again a general decline in terms of the satisfaction with one’s life.
Analysis based on 460,000 participants
In the study, researchers examined how people feel throughout their lifetimes. They did this by analyzing information from 443 studies that followed people over time. In total, these studies included 460,902 individuals.
Professor Susanne Bücker, who worked on the study in Bochum and now works in Cologne, said that they paid attention to three important elements of how people feel. These included: how satisfied people are with life, how often they have positive emotions, and how often they have negative emotions.
Your beliefs shape your reality.
They have a direct influence on your life.
Just because you believe something to be true, doesn’t mean it actually is.
Believing in positivity can lead to happiness and success.
Holding negative beliefs can in turn attract challenges.… pic.twitter.com/XDLrLFQNes
— Brighter Side of Everything (@thebsofe) October 5, 2023
The results revealed that people’s life satisfaction goes down between ages nine to sixteen and then increases up until age seventy. After that time, it then decreases once again roughly up until the age of ninety-six. Specifically in terms of happiness, that tends to go down starting approximately at the age of nine until ninety-four years of age.
However, feelings of sadness are more unpredictable and tend to rise and fall between the ages of nine and twenty-two. After that time, there tends to be a general decline in sadness until the age of sixty, meaning people tend to experience more positive feelings during those years. Studies have shown people generally then tend to feel greater amounts of sadness after their sixtieth birthday.
Researchers found that these changes in how people feel are more noticeable when it comes to feelings of either happiness or sadness rather than overall life satisfaction.
Most people experience positivity during majority of lifespan
The study showed certain positive trends over a longer period of life. According to Professor Susanne Bücker, who was part of the research team, this is especially the case in terms of how satisfied people are with their lives and how often they feel sad or upset.
Researchers believe that the slight decrease in life satisfaction between ages nine and sixteen might be due to changes in the body and social life during puberty. However, satisfaction tends to go up again as people become young adults.
On the other hand, positive feelings tend to go down from childhood to late adulthood. In very old age, all aspects of how people feel tend to get worse rather than better.
This could be because, as people age, their physical abilities and health decline and they have fewer social interactions, in part because many of their friends pass away, according to research.
