{"id":60212,"date":"2019-09-10T14:40:57","date_gmt":"2019-09-10T18:40:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=60212"},"modified":"2021-04-16T08:51:27","modified_gmt":"2021-04-16T12:51:27","slug":"brock-research-examines-how-people-perceive-their-lives-as-they-age","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2019\/09\/brock-research-examines-how-people-perceive-their-lives-as-they-age\/","title":{"rendered":"Brock research examines how people perceive their lives as they age"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why is it that when we\u2019re young, most of us think life is good and will get even better with time, but once we hit our 60s, we often believe it\u2019s all downhill from there? <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In recent research, Associate Professor of Psychology Michael Busseri looks at the question from a few different perspectives.<\/span><\/p>\n

In<\/span> one study<\/span><\/a>, Busseri and Brock alumna Erin Shanahan (BA ’15) explore the concept of the \u2018life script\u2019 that each person has.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s like being in a movie: the script lays out a progressive series of events, which can influence one\u2019s overall level of well-being.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThese are widely-shared beliefs about when certain major milestones are supposed to happen in our lives: graduating from school, going to university, getting a job and getting married,\u201d Busseri said. <\/span>\u201cIt turns out that if you ask people, they\u2019ll come up with a similar list of the big events in life \u2014 not only what the events are, but also their timing and how good or bad they\u2019re supposed to feel when they happen.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

According to the life script, most major milestones happen when people are in their 20s and 30s, Busseri said. By the time someone hits their 60s, what\u2019s left in the life script is retirement, becoming a grandparent, progressively worsening health and losing loved ones through death.<\/span><\/p>\n

At this point in life, the life script doesn\u2019t specify many major happy events compared to the very large number of positive events expected for younger people, he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOne reason why, in general, people expect their well-being to get worse as they age is that there\u2019s not a widely-shared set of beliefs that tells us what older adulthood is really like,\u201d Busseri said. \u201cAnd in particular, we don\u2019t see older adulthood as a time that\u2019s full of exciting, interesting and positive experiences.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And yet a<\/span> second study<\/span><\/a> shows that well-being does not generally get continually worse over time, even into old age. This study focuses on components, or \u2018domains\u2019 of life, such as jobs, relationships, finances and health among other areas.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Busseri and Brock alumna Taysa-Rhea Mise (MA ’14) <\/span>set out to see how people\u2019s beliefs about these specific domains unfold over time and if or how these beliefs impact their overall life assessment.<\/span><\/p>\n

They found that younger adults felt their lives were getting better, not only in general but also in all their domains with one exception: their physical health. \u201cEven adults in their 20s and 30s tend to expect their physical health to decline over time,\u201d Busseri said.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Likewise, older adults perceived a general decline in life overall and in most of their domains, except for relationships with their spouse and children. \u201cPeople believe that these will generally stay stable over time, not decline,\u201d Busseri said.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere are domains in people\u2019s lives where things are expected to go well even into older age,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat our research suggests, however, is that this hasn\u2019t translated into people\u2019s global beliefs about how their life is supposed to unfold over time; most people still anticipate that in older adult things are likely to get worse in the future.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In reality, studies of lives over time show that most people don\u2019t experience dramatic increases or decreases in well-being, Busseri said.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

People tend to stay relatively stable over the long term, despite the common ups and downs in their daily lives, and despite stories of changes in their lives they create through memories of the past or predictions of the future, he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Busseri recommends that older adults in particular focus on areas of their lives that bring them satisfaction, meaning and enjoyment, which \u201cmay actually help them arrive at a more accurate picture of how their life will go.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

For those wanting to increase their life satisfaction, Busseri suggests that people identify concrete ways to make small, incremental changes in their daily lives, rather than expect a large, dramatic one. Such a move is \u201cunlikely to bring a long-lasting change in satisfaction because we adapt so quickly to many types of changes in our lives,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why is it that when we\u2019re young, most of us think life is good and will get even better with time, but once we hit our 60s, we often believe it\u2019s all downhill from there? \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":60215,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[119,7,188,55,1,4,5,38],"tags":[4306,546,8235,607,522,8234,9749,2975,3216,8236,2150],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60212"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60212"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60212\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60223,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60212\/revisions\/60223"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}