Adulthood and Aging

If you had to guess, do you think people tend to be most happy at age eighteen, twenty-five, thirty-five, forty-five, fifty, sixty, or eight-five? The results to that question might surprise you. According to a recent survey conducted by Stone, Schwartz, Broderick, and Deaton (2010) in the article A Snapshot of the Age Distribution of Psychological Well-Being in the United States, as indicated by the 340,000 participants, people start out at age eighteen feeling fairly positive. Happiness then shifts, and people tend to rate its decline until age fifty. At that time, another reversal occurs and people start feeling happier as the years progress onward. By the time people reach eight-five, they feel even more satisfied with themselves than they experienced at age eighteen.