"The older adults appeared wiser with greater self-knowledge and a more astute sense of their past and future feelings they may strive for acceptance of present circumstances as a way of regulating emotions," said Lachman. Moreover, older Americans were consistent in how they viewed the past compared with how they actually answered at that time (during the first survey). Older adults, on the other hand, were more realistic and gave accurate predictions about how satisfied they would be. When comparing both sets of questionnaires, Lachman and colleagues discovered that younger and middle-aged adults showed great illusion (that is, they had major differences in their ratings): Both groups believed life would be better than it turned out to be. Americans younger than 65 viewed the present as more satisfying than the past and were more optimistic about the future than their older counterparts, believing they would be more satisfied with life in ten years. Older Americans (65 and older) viewed the past and the present as being equally satisfying, but believed that the future would be less satisfying than the present. The results suggest that there are age-related differences in how we view the past and the future. With both sets of questionnaires in hand, Lachman and her colleagues were able to compare how subjects felt during the second survey with how they had predicted they would feel at that time. The experiment enabled the researchers to measure how closely the actual life satisfaction ratings matched the perceived ratings (those from the past or 10 years into the future). In 2004, the participants were asked those same questions. They were asked to rate how currently satisfied they were with their lives, how satisfied they were with their lives 10 years earlier and how satisfied they expected to be 10 years later. In the first survey, participants (between the ages of 24-74) completed a telephone interview and questionnaire. To test this idea, the researchers conducted two surveys, the first in 1995-1996, and the second nine years later, between 20. Whether a person is naturally a pessimist or an optimist, the study suggests there are other factors at work in determining the way people consider how satisfying their future lives may be.īrandeis University psychologist Margie Lachman along with Christina Röcke, University of Zurich, Christopher Rosnick, Southern Illinois University, and Carol Ryff, University of Wisconsin, wanted to see if there were differences in actual and perceived ratings of how satisfied Americans were with their lives over a nine-year period. When thinking about the future, some people seem pessimistic, while others' optimism seems to border on fantasy.
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