By IANS,
Washington : Age may colour one’s perceptions, but a bright or gloomy outlook is the outcome of sundry other factors in determining the way we consider how satisfying our future lives may be.
Brandeis University psychologist Margie Lachman along with Christina Röcke, University of Zurich, Christopher Rosnick, Southern Illinois University, and Carol Ryff, University of Wisconsin, wanted to see if there were differences in actual and perceived ratings of how satisfied Americans were with their lives over a nine-year period.
Researchers conducted two surveys, the first in 1995-1996, and the second nine years later, between 2004 and 2006. In the first survey, participants (aged between 24 and 74) completed a phone interview and questionnaire.
They were asked to rate how currently satisfied they were with their lives, how satisfied they were with their lives 10 years earlier and how satisfied they expected to be 10 years later. In 2004, the participants were asked those same questions.
The experiment enabled the researchers to measure how closely the actual life satisfaction ratings matched the perceived ratings (those from the past or 10 years into the future).
With both sets of questionnaires in hand, Lachman and her colleagues were able to compare how subjects felt during the second survey with how they had predicted they would feel at that time.
The results suggest that there are age-related differences in how we view the past and the future. Older Americans (65 plus) viewed the past and the present as being equally satisfying, but believed that the future would be less satisfying than the present.
Americans younger than 65 viewed the present as more satisfying than the past and were more optimistic about the future than their older counterparts, believing they would be more satisfied with life in 10 years.
Both groups believed life would be better than it turned out to be. Older adults, on the other hand, were more realistic and gave accurate predictions about how satisfied they would be.
“The older adults appeared wiser with greater self-knowledge and a more astute sense of their past and future feelings; they may strive for acceptance of present circumstances as a way of regulating emotions,” said Lachman.
These results suggest that younger adults’ optimism about the future motivates them to try to achieve high levels of satisfaction.
These findings were published in the September issue of Psychological Science.