Researchers have uncovered a hidden key to happiness, but you might have to wait a little longer to witness it for yourself.
An international research team has sought to answer the question of when a person is happiest in their life. According to their findings, a child’s life satisfaction gradually declines from ages 9 to 16, but increases slightly until peaking at age 70.
Life satisfaction of a child declines from ages 9 to 16. (Illustrative photo: AP).
Professor Susanne Bucker stated that her team focused on the changes in three central factors of happiness: life satisfaction, positive emotional state, and negative emotional state.
Notably, life satisfaction then decreases again until the age of 96.
The researchers believe that the phenomenon of declining life satisfaction is a result of bodily changes during puberty, as well as social changes during that time. Ms. Bucker noted that an individual feeling less happy after the age of 70 may be due to illness, poor physical activity, declining health, and reduced social relationships.
However, the positive emotional state continues to decline from age 9 until 94. In contrast, the negative emotional state fluctuates slightly between ages 9 and 22, before gradually decreasing until age 60, after which it increases again.
“Overall, the study indicates a positive trend throughout life, if we focus on life satisfaction and negative emotional states,” Ms. Bucker summarized the findings.
The research team examined subjective happiness levels throughout the lives of 460,902 participants. From that group, they filtered out 443 individuals and compared their descriptions of their feelings at different stages of life.
These findings were recently published in the journal Psychological Bulletin.
