Social and Emotional Aging

The relationships we form in life obviously play a huge role in how we react to the world, and especially, how we age. As we get older, biological, neurological, and psychological functioning all get worse, but older people still generally say they’re happy with their age and still have really good emotional well-being. Perhaps this doesn’t seem that strange to you, but scientists are constantly in awe when something seems a little out of order and needs explaining. And this “paradox” of emotional aging definitely does. 

Taking the psychological perspective, older people who have stronger social circles growing up and throughout life say that they have a stronger life purpose, and that’s what drove them to live longer and generally healthier lives. When these people are forced to live through something stressful, such as a loss of a loved one or a move across the country, they find it easier to adapt, to get used to the new way of life. The effect of this finding is just as big as that of high cholesterol and drinking- which is to say, social circles affect survival about as much as really severe biological problems, at least statistically speaking.

Amazingly, there’s a lot more real science that supports this. Research on people aged 80 or more found positive affect (which is basically when a person has a happy attitude towards things) predicted a longer lifespan by 10 years. Similarly, positive emotional experience (which is when a person says they’ve experienced mostly happy or positive emotions in their lives) has been shown to pretty important in health factors, such as high blood pressure and immune system functioning. In other words, old people who have happy and healthy relationships are more likely to have fewer health problems that are common in older people (yay!). On the other side of the fence, fighting and otherwise negative or upsetting emotions are connected to poorer health and a higher chance of depression.  

So can anyone explain why this happens? I’m glad you asked, and I’m doubly glad many researchers have also asked that same question, which is why we now have so many possible answers. There are two theories that a lot of the neuropsychological field have agreed are probably accurate (I say probably because scientists argue and debate just as much as politicians, if not more). The selective optimization with compensation theory (SOC) says as people age, everything they do gets harder or takes more time, so that means the resources they do have are carefully distributed across their life. In this way, they’re able to prioritize goals that are most important and achievable, while getting rid of smaller, less important goals that aren’t very feasible. According to SOC, an older person can optimize their life, or choose what they want to focus on, whether that means occupational goals or social relationships, and therefore create for themselves happy and fulfilling life experiences that help them live longer. 

The other big theory in the field is socioemotional selectivity theory (SST). This theory centers on the idea of time, and well, older people have less time. We don’t know if they are conscious of their diminished resources or if this is done completely unconsciously, but older people are somehow aware of their shortened time and begin to select the goals that really matter. When people are young, they see the future as endless, with a huge amount of possibilities like presents ready to be unwrapped. When people age, they no longer see the future as having no end, so they begin to choose to maintain only the strongest relationships and pursue only the most important goals. SST says by the end of our lives, we are somehow biologically or psychologically aware of the limited time we have left to live and that understanding drives the way we choose to live the remainder of our lives. Which ironically, extends our time and lets us live longer.

Maybe you already had an idea that positive emotions can be super helpful. But it’s reassuring to know that the idea isn’t just an old wives’ tale, and that there have been real studies and real statistics done to look at the problem, as well as pretty well-known people (in the science world at least) who have come up with reasons for why this might be the case. The science, and the math, helps us understand what otherwise is the strange and intriguing “paradox” of aging.

— Allie Yuxin Lin