2/2/17

The upside to aging.

One of the perks of being a college professor is that textbook publishers send you tons of free books for review, whether you ask for them or not.  This has given rise to a cottage industry of people who will then buy the books you aren't using.  I found this a bit of a moral morass, as this aftermarket eats into publishers' profits,  until I happened on a solution: I kept the cash the buyers gave me in an envelope in my desk.  If a student came in and had some kind of financial crisis, as they often did, I was always able to help.

But I digress.

One of those books was a text on the psychology of aging.  I was in my mid 50s at the time, so I read it.  Wow!  Talk about depressing!  It was pretty much a litany of the cognitive (thinking) systems that would fade and eventually fail as time went by.  Bummer.

So I sold it at the first opportunity and tried very hard not to think about growing old.

But today a ray of sunshine arrived in my inbox in the form of an article from the Observer, a publication of the Association for Psychological Science.  Titled “The Cognitive Upside of Aging”, it laid out some of the things that got better with age, even into our 60s and 70s.

Psychologists found that certain abilities “peak” at certain ages and then gradually decline.  For example, information processing speed peaked at around 18-20. However, vocabulary, math, general knowledge, and verbal comprehension didn’t peak until much later in life. Vocabulary, especially, didn’t really seem to have a peak. Older adults were also better at reading emotional situations than their younger counterparts, an advantage that lasted well into their 60s. In fact, their brains also promote more emotional stability as they age.

Sustained attention also improves with age.  We geezers are much better at staying focused on a task than the younger folks.  That sustained attention is really important.  It helps us stay on tasks that involve learning, perception and memory.  Plus lapses in attention can lead to difficulties at work or increase risk of car accidents.  

Another set of studies found that while younger participants had faster reaction times, older participants were more thoughtful and cautious.

Finally, they found that older people who are in good health are generally upbeat about the world. People in their 20s are also pretty happy.  That level deteriorates over time, and they don’t regain the same level of happiness until they’re in their 60s or 70s, so hang in there!

In general, their conclusion was “At any given age, you’re getting better at some things, you’re getting worse at some other things, and you’re at a plateau at some other things…There’s probably not one age at which you peak on most things, much less all of them.”

So good news!  You’ll probably become happier as you age and more emotionally stable, better able to read situations, and dynamite at Scrabble and crossword puzzles.

Carry on.