Older Adults are programmed to remember happy thoughts: Happiness Helps You Live Longer

A 2008 Gallup telephone survey of more than 340,000 adults in the United States found that people become happier and experience less worry after they reach the age of 50. In fact, by the age of 85, people are happier with their life than they were when they were 18 years old. Is happiness part of growing older, or do happy people live longer?

In 2011 Donna Rose Addis from the University of Auckland (NZ), and her colleagues, tried to answer this question. They published a study that reveals that older adults' ability to remember positive events is linked to the way in which the brain processes emotions. In the older adult brain, there are strong connections between those regions that process emotions and those known to be important for retaining memories. They asked young adults (ages 19-31) and older adults (ages 61-80) to view a series of photographs with positive and negative themes, such as a victorious skier or a wounded soldier. While participants viewed these images, a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scan recorded their brain activity. In older adult brains, two regions that are linked to the processing of emotional content were strongly connected to regions that are linked to memory formation. These findings suggest that older adults remember the good times well because the brain regions that process positive emotions also process memory. Living longer makes you remember positive emotions better. Older adults experience an increase in positive thoughts and feelings, along with a decrease in negative emotions like anger and frustration.

But it is not a one way street. Positive emotions not only make you feel good they also reduce blood pressure, promote better heart health, reduce frailty and promote exercise and a healthy lifestyle. Numerous studies continue to show that living longer relates to this ability to see things in a positive light. Research found that older individuals with more positive self-perceptions of aging—measured up to 23 years earlier—lived 7.5 years longer than those with less positive self-perceptions. This advantage remained after accounting for differences in age, gender, socioeconomic status, loneliness, and functional health.

Being happy also relates to being philanthropic, giving back to people. Anthropologists point out that early developed societies practiced helping others as a social norm. There appears to be a fundamental human drive toward helping others. Evolution suggests that human nature evolved emotionally and behaviorally by increasing longevity for those that helps others. We seem to prosper under the protective influence of positive emotions.

Being happy was always seen as important. Enshrined in the Declaration of Independent is the phrase “…endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness…” Jefferson himself equated happiness with living a virtuous and useful life. "It is neither wealth nor splendor, but tranquility and occupation (meaningful work)," he said, "which give happiness." How very true, and most older adults know that so well.

Mario Garrett, Ph.D., is a professor of gerontology at San Diego State University and is currently on sabbatical at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He can be reached at mariusgarrett@yahoo.com