Tag Archives: The Good Life

Happiness at any age: Mattering never stops mattering whatever your age

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This article from The Good Life Blog in Pyschology Today was written by Christopher Peterson, who was a professor of psychology and organizational studies and former director of clinical training.at the University of Michigan.  He held the appointment of Arthur F. Thurnau Professor, in recognition of his contributions to teaching. Peterson was among the 100 most widely cited psychologists in the world. He died at a tragically young age last year and according to all who knew him he mattered a lot to many people.  His book Pursuing the Good Life: 100 Reflections in Positive Psychology which is a compilation of his articles  from The Good Life Blog in Pyschology Today is well worth reading.

How Old Is Old?

Mattering never stops mattering.

 

Published on May 30, 2011 by Christopher Peterson, Ph.D. in The Good Life

I hope I die before I get old.

- “My Generation” by The Who (1965)

I recently led a workshop for mental health professionals, and in the ensuing question and answer period, someone referred to 60-year-old adults as old. Given that I am recently on the other side of sixty, I was taken aback and immediately protested. “No, no, no – sixty is middle-aged,” I said. Indeed, for the past few decades, I have always described middle-aged as however old I happen to be, plus or minus five years.

Our exchange was light-hearted, but there are some interesting issues that it highlights. Given that the populations in most industrialized nations are aging and given trends toward increased longevity in these nations, the question “How old is old?” deserves to be addressed with more than banter.

By a coincidence, right after the workshop, I heard a BBC radio show that addressed precisely the question “How old is old?” by discussing recent survey results from different nations (e.g., The Nielsen Company, 2011). People of course differ in how they answer this question, and not surprisingly, the younger someone is, the younger he or she sees “old” to be. Furthermore, about one third of those from “older” nations say that one only becomes “old” if over 80 years of age, whereas fewer than 1% of those from “younger” nations use 80 years of age as the cutoff. I guess I’ll stay put in the United States for the duration!

Related Articles

 

Developmental psychologists have long made distinctions among life stages based on age. For example:

 

• Infancy (birth to 2 years)

• Chikdhood (3-12 years)

• Adolescence(13-19 years)

• Young adulthood (20-29 years)

• Adulthood (30-39 years)

• Middle Age (40-54 years)

• Old age (55+ years)

This is just one scheme, and many others exist. Some theorists add in new stages (e.g., tweens, the old old), and others expand the age ranges of one or more of these stages (e.g., if one pursues higher education, adolescence arguably stretches far into one’s twenties or even one’s thirties). There are no consensual answers, of course, because identifying stages of life in terms of chronological age tries to make categories out of a continuum and moreover ignores individual psychological differences among those of the same chronological age. We all know “young” sixty-year olds, and “old” twenty-year olds.

That said, changes with age can and do occur – biological, psychological, and social – making it reasonable to offer at least rough generalizations across the lifespan. “Act your age!” is an admonition based on assumptions that have some grounding in chronological reality. So, we expect adults to be more responsible than children, if only because adulthood is when most people are working and raising children of their own.

However, we should also recognize that “old” is a shifting and fuzzy designation. We should be cautious – as individuals or as a society – in imposing a uniform cutoff on ourselves or others with respect to what one can or should do when of a certain age.

And perhaps the positive psychology take home message of this entry is that what may matter is not “how old is old” but rather how one feels about being “old” (or middle-aged or young). An important line of research by Becca Levy at Yale University shows that younger adults with more positive attitudes toward aging are healthier when they do become older adults, even when the usual risk factors for poor heath are statistically controlled.

It is a cliché to observe that the contemporary US is a youth-oriented culture, and I exemplified this attitude with the anecdote that began this essay. As a 60-year old, I do not want to be regarded as “old” because our society does not take older people seriously. Until society changes, perhaps I should change myself and recognize that the best way to be taken seriously, regardless of one’s chronological age, is to matter to others. The way one matters will differ as a function of age, of course, but mattering never stops mattering.

References

Levy, B.R., Slade, M. D., & Kasl, S. V. (2002). Longitudinal benefit of positive self-perceptions of aging on functioning health. Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences, 57, 409-417.

Levy, B. R., Slade, M. D., Kunkel, S. R., and Kasl, S. V. (2002). Longevity increased by positive self-perceptions of aging. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 261-270.

Levy, B. R., Zonderman, A. B., Slade, M. D., & Ferrucci, L. (2009). Age stereotypes held earlier in life predict cardiovascular events in later Life.Psychological Science, 20, 296-298.

The Nielsen Company (2011). The global impact of an aging world. New York: author.

 

Posted by Shona Lockhart on 6th May 2013

 

 

 

A fascinating experiment: can smiling really reduce stress?

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Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy. — Thich Nhat Hanh

The following article by the late Christopher Peterson Ph. D revisits a topic I have touched on in a previous Happiness Experiment blog post: the importance of smiling. Learning how to smile more was the first Happiness Experiment I wrote about when I began the blog last year and I think it is a topic worth looking at again as Dr Peterson’s article suggests.  If something as simple as smile can help us to recover from stress I think it is an experiment worth trying.  Take a look at this short Happiness Experiment No 1 video and read the article and decide for yourself whether you will give it a go.

 

Smiling and Stress

Smiling speeds recovery when a stressful experience is over.
Published on September 13, 2012 by Christopher Peterson, Ph.D. in The Good Life
Christopher Peterson

Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy. — Thich Nhat Hanh

An interesting research report, by Tara Kraft and Sarah Pressman, will soon be published inPsychological Science. Their research speaks directly to well-being, psychological and physical, and the link between these two spheres. The researchers wondered about the effects of smiling on physiological recovery from stress.

The innovation of their research was that they deliberately manipulated whether participants were smiling or not — making this a true experiment — and further took steps to avoid “demanding” hypothesized responses from these participants*.

Kraft and Pressman (2012) studied 169 college students, telling them that their investigation concerned multi-tasking. Participants were hooked up to a monitor that assessed their heart rate in beats per minute throughout the entire experiment. Heart rate is a simple and reliable way to measure experienced stress — the higher the rate, the more stress someone is experiencing.

After a 10-minute acclimation period, participants were asked to spend two minutes doing a difficult task, using their non-dominant hand to trace a star-shaped design without going off a provided outline. Oh, and they could only see what they were doing while viewing a mirror image of their hand, which is to say a reversed image. Accuracy was emphasized, and participants were given false information about “average” performance: eight tracings in two minutes with fewer than 25 errors. In reality, participants could only manage two tracings and on average made more than 25 errors.

A five-minute recovery period ensued, followed by another stress-inducing task, submerging one’s hand in ice water for one minute, a painful but not harmful experience. Then there was another five-minute recovery period.

 

Are you following? Here comes the gist of the experiment. During the stress tasks (not the recovery periods), participants were assigned to different conditions. Those in the neutral expression control group were asked to hold the ends of chopsticks gently in their mouth while relaxing their face. Those in the standard smiling group did the same while using theirzygomaticus major muscles**, those involved in raising the corners of the mouth, thereby producing a facial smile. Those in the Duchenne smiling group held chopsticks cross-wise in their mouths while using their zygomaticus major muscles as well as their orbicularis oculi muscles, those involved in closing the eyelids, thereby producing the full-faced smile known as a Duchenne smile. Duchenne smiles are often characterized as genuine ones, and they predict marital satisfaction as well as longevity, presumably because their frequent display is a marker of a happy and satisfied life (Abel & Kruger, 2010; Harker & Keltner, 2001). Participants were provided coaching and shown photo examples of how they should look in each condition. Their fidelity to the instructions was later checked by raters watching videotapes.

Half of the participants in each of the two smiling groups were explicitly told to smile, which is how the researchers controlled for demand characteristics. These participants were aware that they should be smiling, whereas other participants were simply told how to hold their faces.

The experiment had five conditions: (1) neutral expression; (2) standard smiling without awareness; (3) standard smiling with awareness; (4) Duchenne smiling without awareness; and (5) Duchenne smiling with awareness. Their heart rate was monitored throughout, and the crucial analyses looked at reductions in heart rate following the multiple tasks as a function of condition.

Results were straightforward and as expected. Regardless of their awareness, smiling participants recovered more quickly from stress than those with neutral expressions, and those displaying Duchenne smiles recovered somewhat more quickly than those displaying a standard smile.

So, smiling speeds recovery from stress. How? The research did not directly test possible biological mechanisms, but perhaps smiling influences blood flow in the brain, thereby undoing the effects of stress. In any event, let me draw out some of the implications.

Smile while you are stressed, genuinely if possible. But faking — i.e., smiling with just your mouth — may still be worth your effort. Doing so does not reduce stress in the moment, but it speeds recovery when a stressful experience is over. That said, Kraft and Pressman cautioned that their finding applies to recovery from short-term stress. The long-term display of emotions one is not really feeling may actually take a toll (Goldberg & Grandey, 2007).

I just talked to a writer for a fitness magazine, who had heard about this study and was writing a story on it. He asked if smiling during a workout made it easier. My opinion was “Not exactly.” For starters, exercise raises one’s heartbeat, but I assume in a different way than the stressful tasks in Kraft and Pressman’s experiment. Much as I would like to believe that stress caused by multi-tasking constitutes aerobic exercise, I suspect it does not. And in any event, the research was about recovery from stress and not about the reduction of stress per se.

Still, smiling during exercise may make a workout more enjoyable, if only because it makes the smiling person more approachable by others. I have a strong opinion that workouts would be more enjoyable for most of us if these workouts were more social and not pursued in grim indifference to those sharing the same gym (Peterson & Xydis, 2011). Smiling opens doors, at gyms and elsewhere.

Late at night, when I am flipping through television shows, I sometimes come across an infomercial pushing some sort of exercise device or program. The people depicted are of course fit and attractive, but they also have a strange expression on their face, which I finally have identified. It is not exactly a smile. It is a display of smugness, as in “I am ripped and you are not,” which I find off-putting. I would be more inclined to purchase whatever is being urged on me if these folks were simply smiling.

I find it intriguing that Duchenne smiles can be deliberately created, which goes against their common interpretation as genuine and thus impossible to fake. However, I remember some years ago teaching a small seminar class in which I mentioned Duchenne smiles. I commented that they could not be faked. A student raised her hand. I acknowledged her, and she gave the whole class a wonderful Duchenne smile. I just stared back at her, speechless for a moment. Then I asked, “How did you do that? Are you faking?”

She smiled, again, radiantly, and said, “What makes you think I’m faking? I’m just smiling. I’m a theater major, by the way, and I have learned how to express emotions.”

What ensued was a fascinating discussion of method acting, and I think positive psychology, in its search for interventions that bolster well-being, could learn much from the strategies of Stanislavski, Strasberg, and others.

Cheers.

* What are called demand characteristics can plague studies of sentient human beings, who may try to figure out what is expected of them in an investigation and then act accordingly, confirming the research hypothesis for irrelevant reasons (Orne, 1962). Imagine a psychology laboratory to which potential participants report for a study. As participants wait in the hallway for the study to begin, they see a bulletin board on which are posted descriptions of past studies conducted by those who run the laboratory. Is it far-fetched to suppose that some potential participants read these descriptions, think about them, and once the study begins recognize the research paradigm as one intended to investigate the effects of X on Y? Is it far-fetched to think that the behavior of these participants is thereby influenced?

** According to Wikipedia, variations in the structure of these muscles produce dimples. Mario Lopez should be grateful for his zygomaticus major muscles, which have made him a celebrity.

References

Abel, E. L., & Kruger, M. L. (2010). Smile intensity in photographs predicts longevity. Psychological Science, 21 , 542–544.

Goldberg, L. S., & Grandey, A. A. (2007). Display rules versus display autonomy: Emotion regulation, emotional exhaustion, and task performance in a call center simulation. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 12, 301-318.

Harker, L. A., & Keltner, D. (2001). Expressions of positive emotion in women’s college yearbook pictures and their relationship to personalityand life outcomes across adulthood. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80 , 112–124.

Kraft, Tara L., & Pressman, Sarah D. (2012). Grin and bear it: The influence of manipulated facial expression on the stress response.Psychological Science.

Orne, Martin T. (1962). On the social psychology of the psychological experiment: With particular reference to demand characteristics and their implications. American Psychologist, 17, 776–783.

Peterson, C., & Xydis, K. (2011). Positive psychology for health and fitness professionals. Tucson, AZ: DSWFitness.

Article originally published on September 13, 2012 by Christopher Peterson, Ph.D. in The Good Life
Posted by Shona Lockhart, 27th March 2013

 

What can Anna Karenina teach us about happy families?

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“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

Leo Tolstoy

Jude Law's looks had to be disguised for the role of Karenin, while his costume was inspired by Tsar Alexander II

Keira Knightley and Jude Law in Anna Karenina

Positive Psychology and the Anna Karenina Principle

Does the Anna Karenina Principle apply to people’s well-being?

“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

Leo Tolstoy

Tolstoy’s well-known opening to Anna Karenina is thought by some to apply not only to families but also more broadly. It has even given rise to a rule dubbed the Anna Karenina Principle*, which holds that it is possible to fail in many ways but to succeed in only one way, by avoiding each of the routes to failure.

An example was provided by Jared Diamond (1997) in his book Guns, Germs, and Steel. He discussed why so few animal species have been domesticated. Unless an animal is easy to feed, unless it grows rapidly, unless it breeds readily in captivity, unless it has a benign temperament, unless it does not run away when frightened, and unless it has a stable social hierarchy, domestication is not going to happen. Think horses versus zebras.

 

Centuries ago, Aristotle proposed a similar idea in The Nichomachean Ethics: ”For men are good in but one way, but bad in many.”

And much more recently, psychologist Roy Baumeister and his colleagues (2001) concluded that “bad is stronger than good,” meaning that bad emotions, bad parents, and bad feedback have more impact than their good counterparts.

The Anna Karenina Principle implies that what is good is more elusive than what is bad. What is good reflects a perfect storm of contributors, and the absence of only one of these contributors precludes what is positive, desirable, or worthy.

If we apply this principle to the well-being of people, the conclusion is discouraging. Threats abound to happiness and life satisfaction, and only one of these needs to be present to bring us down. In contrast, doing well can only occur in special circumstances.

So, do we have another criticism of positive psychology? Is the scientific study of what makes life worth living the study of the fragile and the fleeting among the fortunate and the few?

I think not. Calling a notion a principle need not make it so. I prefer to regard the Anna Karenina Principle as a hypothesis to be tested. While it may hold in some cases, it likely does not hold in all or indeed most cases. If it did, then the factors that enable happiness (well-being) would – necessarily – be necessary ones, and that flies in the face of what the evidence actually shows. Conversely, the factors that make happiness difficult to attain would – again necessarily – be damaging and insurmountable in all cases. That too flies in the face of what the evidence actually shows.

If positive psychology, not to mention common sense, teaches us anything, it is that all of us are a mixture of strengths and weaknesses. No one has it all, and no one lacks it all, except of course the boys who want to date our teenage daughters. And our daughters would beg to differ.

We know that there are numerous contributors to happiness but that they rarely if ever exist at the same time for the same person. Nevertheless, most people are happy (Diener & Diener, 1996).

We know that Abraham Lincoln, Mother Teresa, and Steven Jobs, among many other well-known folks, all had weaknesses and flaws, yet each lived a life worth living and indeed a life that is widely acclaimed.

We know that most people are resilient. Despite experience with potentially-traumatic events, most do well in their wake (Bonanno, 2004).

And by the way, although this is a topic for another essay, I doubt that the Anna Karenina Principle even applies to families. Happy families exist, as even Tolstoy would acknowledge, but they are wonderfully diverse.

*Thanks to Wikipedia for background on the Anna Karenina Principle.

Article originally published on February 27, 2012 by the late Christopher Peterson, Ph.D. in The Good Life

References

Baumeister, R. F., Bratslavsky, E., Finkenauer, C., & Vohs, K. D. (2001). Bad is stronger than good. Review of General Psychology, 5, 323-370.

Bonanno, G. A. (2004). Loss, trauma, and human resilience: Have we underestimated the human capacity to thrive after extremely aversive events? American Psychologist, 59, 20-28.

Diamond, J. (1997). Guns, germs, and steel: The fates of human societies. New York: Norton.

Diener, E., & Diener, C. (1996). Most people are happy. Psychological Science, 7, 181-185.

Anna Karenina – Official Trailer (2012)

Posted by Shona Lockhart, 29th October 2012