Laura Carstensen

So one was that cognitive impairment was actually leading to more happiness.

Lots of studies have looked at the relationship between everything from executive functioning and education to intelligence and this positive outlook on life.

And it's the reverse.

So people with the highest levels of executive function and cognitive abilities and education, those are the ones showing this effect the strongest.

So we ruled that one out.

Then there was a hypothesis generated by many in the field of psychiatry that was called masked depression.

That is, really older people were terribly depressed, but they were covering that up because it was a way of keeping it from others, but more importantly, fooling themselves.

So we did studies and others did studies where we would have people

experience different kinds of emotions while they were in brain scanners and be able to look at activation of different regions of the brain.

And again, you couldn't explain it through a lack of activation.

And a lot of research was done to try to explain or reconcile that this was really just cognitive impairment or brain impairment.

It was really about something else.

But with every study, it became clear that this was a highly reliable finding.

Older people were happier in their day-to-day lives on balance than younger people were.

Well, the paradox really was that aging entails a lot of bad things.

You know, cognitively, people often do change, feel that memory isn't as good, attention is tougher to keep in focus.

Not to mention the physical changes with age.

Most of us experience more aches and pains.

So all these things are changing.

And then we're in the societal context again.