Older people generally more emotionally healthy, better able to resist daily temptations:
The stereotype of grumpy old people apparently doesn't hold up under closer inspection. A new study from Duke and Vanderbilt University psychologists finds that older people are generally more emotionally stable and better able to resist temptations in their daily lives.
"There is evidence here that emotional health and regulation improve with age," said Daisy Burr, a Duke PhD student who led the study with Gregory Samanez-Larkin, an assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience. Their work appeared March 23 in the journal Emotion.
[...] The researchers said their findings are a better reflection of real-world conditions because they surveyed participants in their own time and space, rather than having them respond to cues in a laboratory setting. Burr added that older people are better at regulating their emotional state when allowed to do what they want.
In the end, Burr's analysis of the data found people experiencing more negative affect are worse at resisting desires. Younger study participants who had higher levels of life satisfaction were better able to resist desires.
But older adults were better at resisting temptation, regardless of their life satisfaction.
Daisy A. Burr, Jaime J. Castrellon, David H. Zald, Gregory R. Samanez-Larkin. Emotion dynamics across adulthood in everyday life: Older adults are more emotionally stable and better at regulating desires.. Emotion, 2020; DOI: 10.1037/emo0000734
(Score: 1) by Quicksilver on Monday April 06 2020, @12:09PM (2 children)
Old people probably don't spend much time posing for pictures to post on Instagram to show how "They are living large" so no one will ever know when things are going well.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Monday April 06 2020, @08:58PM (1 child)
They're also the last American generation to live the American dream and actually get a proper retirement.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 07 2020, @03:41AM
The market has been low lately and I've been investing in KBWD, QQQ, SPY, XLRE. When the market recovers, especially given our ever inflationary policy, I will have more money.
Many don't invest. Those that don't may struggle more.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Monday April 06 2020, @12:21PM (2 children)
"Leave me the hell alone, and get off my lawn"
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 06 2020, @03:24PM (1 child)
Arrgh, get off me poop deck.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 06 2020, @04:10PM
^ said without a pirate accent
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 06 2020, @12:38PM (2 children)
Emotionally stable people more emotionally stable, moreso as they get older, having learned to avoid and ignore emotionally unstable people.
We've joked about it [soylentnews.org] but I wonder how the covid-19 lockdown turns out. Will millions of younger introverts realize they're much happier without nonsense from drama queens, egocentrics and vapid extroverts impeding their lives?
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 06 2020, @07:16PM
> much happier without nonsense from drama queens, egocentrics...
I'm retirement age (not retiring yet) and I would definitely be happier without an egocentric in the White House.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Monday April 06 2020, @09:11PM
No they won't be much happier. If anything, they'll be much sadder. The reason why is because hanging out in person is a civilizing factor. Now with more of their interactions virtual and online, they're going to be dealing with more garbage that they may be powerless to deal with in real-life. Even they realize online social things like Facebook are an unhealthy necessity and being there is not something to be proud of. "House Party" apps? Yeah fucking right. I don't know anybody who tried it more than once after a big "nope."
And if this Covid turns out to be a nothingburger like every other bug that flies out of filthy China, they will never obey and will actively revolt against future shelter-in-place orders and the politicians who order them. They don't trust the media, they don't trust the government, and they're right not to after the boy cried wolf half a gazillion times. They're not stupid enough to believe the official reasons of why America's been at war since 9/11. They're not stupid enough to believe the official story of 9/11 itself. Unfortunately, they are stupid enough to believe socialism can work in divided non-homogeneous nations. They're not going to be afraid of this unless their buddies start dropping around them left and right. Having a grandma of a friend of a friend that is in the ICU maybe because of the virus is not going to be a good enough excuse for them to put their lives on hold.
Furthermore, that boomers screwed them out of prosperity leaves them with a sense of purposelessness and nihilism and now, they believe, boomers are screwing them out of the only remaining things in life they could enjoy: going to Starbucks for a latte and avocado toast and bullshitting on the patio, or going out to the bar for a beer and even more bullshitting.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 06 2020, @12:38PM (1 child)
srsly
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 06 2020, @07:17PM
Other senior citizens? Sex doesn't stop at 60 (or more).
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Monday April 06 2020, @12:54PM (3 children)
Most people take years to mature emotionally, each at their own rate.
Cheetos never do.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday April 06 2020, @01:41PM (2 children)
But they're delicious.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Touché) by JoeMerchant on Monday April 06 2020, @02:37PM (1 child)
Would be entertaining, if it weren't for the long term health consequences.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 06 2020, @04:13PM
Touchaayyy
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bradley13 on Monday April 06 2020, @01:39PM (3 children)
I would hope that one learns more as one ages. Not everyone does, but I think most people do.
As for grumpy? Well, there are certainly those. In my case, however, it's just a lower tolerance for BS and deliberate stupidity. I say "deliberate" because I have no problem with anyone who is doing the best they can. It's when they refuse to apply whatever braincells they have, that I get irritable. Like, for example, my cousin - an otherwise intelligent woman - who believes that Corona is a deliberate Chinese plot, and further that Trump not only is (possible), but alwasys has been (um...) on top of the situation.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 06 2020, @02:44PM (1 child)
Wisdom is a nice way to put it. Another way would be to say that most of the big mistakes we're going to make in our lives have probably been made already, so we've had the benefit of a learning curve that youth and 20-somethings don't.
As for grumpiness, I think you have to look at the bigger picture. I'm far more emotional now, not less. I've just learned to avoid the things that drive me into a rage. Twenty years ago I was active on the precursors to modern social media - IRC, telnet chat, message boards. Today, I'm off social media save for the occasional AC post on this site.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 06 2020, @03:48PM
The ones likely to crash and burn have already done so.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday April 06 2020, @02:44PM
A CEO I once worked for introduced me to the term "assholes and elbows," yeah - we were on top of that "living the American dream" thing all assholes and elbows right up until March when it became apparent that allowing 7 million Americans to die needlessly wasn't compatible with most people's "American dream." So, now, here we are, Elon too, all assholes and elbows on top of the current situation, and we're going to drill baby drill so hard and so fast that we'll be back to that American dream faster than those other countries can even make their first batch of facemasks.
Each person's reality is formed by the information they are exposed to and choose to accept. Some learn and grow toward a peaceful, harmonious existence. Others figure "what the hell, bankruptcy is a legal option, I'd be a fool not to use it."
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 06 2020, @02:10PM (3 children)
Young people still have to learn it the hard way.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday April 06 2020, @04:19PM (2 children)
No. Don't believe news infotainment people. Do believe journalists.
The problem is that we have few to no real journalists today.
Young people won't believe you if you say you used to get Netflix by US Postal Mail.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday April 06 2020, @05:28PM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday April 06 2020, @09:21PM
I left open the possibility that we might have some True Scottish Journalists. But I could not name any. I would not exclude the possibility of a genuine unicorn, or ufo, even though I haven't seen any true journalists in a long time.
Young people won't believe you if you say you used to get Netflix by US Postal Mail.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Mojibake Tengu on Monday April 06 2020, @02:22PM (11 children)
That's understandable statistics bias. Lot of emotionally unstable people already suicided or got killed in younger age.
They have already tried and mostly regret it.
The edge of 太玄 cannot be defined, for it is beyond every aspect of design
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 06 2020, @02:30PM (8 children)
Very unlikely it is THAT many. The percent suiciding, and percent getting killed outside warzones, is very minor.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Runaway1956 on Monday April 06 2020, @02:38PM (7 children)
By "outside warzones", do you include Chicago, Baltimore, and the many other cities where gangs war with each other, daily?
I think the number of people who are killed off, at least partly due to their emotional instability, is pretty high. A more mellow person isn't going to attack a rival gang just because one of that gang flipped him off. A more excitable person will attack for that, or even lesser reasons. People who are actually emotionally stable will avoid joining a gang in the first place.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Farkus888 on Monday April 06 2020, @02:52PM
Gonna have to go with the AC on this one. The measured effect is larger than the combined lifetime suicide and murder rates.
Coping strategies require learning. That learning compounds over a lifetime. It's documented that raw problem solving degrades with age but knowledge continues to grow. For example, vocabulary sizes increase well after problem solving falls off. Coping skills fit the class of knowledge that continues to improve.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 06 2020, @03:04PM
The US murder rate, while three times higher or worse when compared to a lot of Western or Northern Europe, Japan, or South Korea, is still 5.03/100k inhabitants. That's 0.005% - so even if every killing every year came from people born the same year, by age 70 there would be 99.65% of that group still around. So no, that doesn't explain it. The US suicide rate is also terribly high, as of 2016 it was 13.42/100k inhabitants. That's 0.01342% - so if every suicide was from the same birth year, by age 70 there would be 94% of the group still around. Even that doesn't explain it.
I have twin alternate theories. On one side, I think people with poor emotional resilience, weak social support, or just stressful lives are more likely to develop serious health problems. It can be from overeating, smoking, alcohol, or drugs or even if the person has none of those problems then just plain being stressed increases your risk of cardiovascular problems. Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular illness, tobacco, alcohol, and harder drugs do kill people. So the grumpiest do get weeded out that way. But on the other side I do think people learn from their mistakes as they age. I'm more emotional now than I was as a teenager. But although it took twenty years to learn the lesson, I stopped using social media (or its precursors IRC, message boards - aside from this one - and so forth). So my personality might be more predisposed to grumpiness than before, but I avoid the things that bring it out. I know many others in their 40s or older that are the same.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 06 2020, @04:21PM (4 children)
Fucking hell you racist fuckwad.
Gang warfare is just as stupid as the rest of humanity that uses violence for their own means. The corporate use of US military to secure markets and suppress inconvenient governments ranks WAAAY higher in my mind than gang warfare. It is the same concept though, kill your rivals for financial gain along with soothing the egos of the narcissistic shit heads at the top.
But of course you always focus on gang violence in specific cities, kinda like you are whistling a specific tune to bring the boys to your yard. How about we flip that on you and bring up all your white neighbors who murdered black people for daring to date a while girl, acting too "uppitty", etc. Gang violence is hardly the only domain of violent assholes lashing out because they're insecure assholes.
Ah well, runaway being mildly racist is nothing new, but if no one points it out to you then you'll just get worse. Maybe this little pushback will jog a neuron or two the next time you want to spout off like an overflowing douche.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday April 06 2020, @05:28PM (2 children)
Well, there used to be a bunch of Democrats who wore white robes with magical designs embroidered on them, who would go round up some darkies to lynch. Please, tell us more about those Democrats. Republicans? Not so much - they were busy trying out new ways to exploit those darkies for financial gain. Why kill a man, when you can make money off of him? Go on, tell us more about racism in America, Anonymous Coward. When you've spouted everything you know about racism, then you may creep back into the closet with all the other hypocrites on the progressive left.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 17 2020, @12:45AM (1 child)
You're leaving out a lot of history there. The Democrats and Republicans were the same party decades prior to the civil war. During the Civil War the R's were the religious progressives pushing for either repatriation of Africans to African (see: Liberian history), or emancipation of slaves. They were also predominantly northerners with most of the industrial base and fewer labor intensive agriculture industries.
The south on the other hand was primarily agriculture and much of its 'lucrative' cash crops were centered on sugar cane, cotton, and other manual labor intesive crops.
After the civil war, there was more or less a status quo until the defection in the early to middle part of the 20th century, leading to the mid 20th century defection of most of the Racists from the the Democrats to the Republicans. While there has been plenty of jockeying over issues, when you come down to it, it's a once party system wagging the dog to keep people from looking too closely at whose hands are wiggling both tails.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday April 17 2020, @07:56AM
"We'll have those niggers voting for us for the next 200 years!" Johnson
The civil rights acts were pushed through by the R, the independents, and third parties, against D resistance. When it became obvious that the D's couldn't stop the civil rights issues, they flip-flopped, and tried to take credit for everything. It worked, because people still have that perception that the D's care about colored people. But it's only a perception.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 06 2020, @07:15PM
Was gonna say that Runaway must be the exception that proves the rule, being as he is, emotionally unhealthy, unable to resist the fear and loathing of racism, Islamophobia, zenophobia, hoplophilia, and just not being very resilient or mentally stable. Fucking racist dickwad!
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday April 06 2020, @04:32PM (1 child)
Or realize the futility of it.
But I would also point out:
Laughter is the best medicine.
Keep it right next to the hydrocodone.
Don't be tempted by the hydrocodone. That story does not have a happy ending. And you can learn this by observing the experience of others without learning the lesson first hand.
Young people won't believe you if you say you used to get Netflix by US Postal Mail.
(Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Monday April 06 2020, @08:35PM
Well, no. People who actually abuse opiates invariably do so because they're attempting to self-medicate emotional pain; it's no coincidence that the levels of opiate abuse across the country track closely with poverty levels. The people who die while on opiates are invariably either in the drug-abusing-addict population or were already terminal.
Unfortunately, our government knows it's far cheaper to demonize an entire class of drugs by lumping together addicts, patients & terminal patients, than it is to tackle the socioeconomic clusterfuck that has been leading a lot of otherwise-mentally-healthy people to abuse the drugs in the first place. The medical insurance industry is perfectly happy with that solution, as it means that in addition to favoring drugs over more expensive physical treatment (where it exists), it can save money by restricting legit patients to inadequate levels of medication, often leaving them in too much pain to hold their jobs or have much of 'a life' beyond existing.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by inertnet on Monday April 06 2020, @02:57PM (5 children)
And old people tend to be less driven by raging hormones.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 06 2020, @03:03PM
People usually don't like acknowledging this because it diminishes what we think of as "free will." It's like saying animals are ruled by their instincts... but WE aren't, right?
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday April 06 2020, @04:21PM (3 children)
Old people can get supplements of raging hormones.
Young people won't believe you if you say you used to get Netflix by US Postal Mail.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 06 2020, @07:17PM (2 children)
It's called "Fox News". Fortunately, Fox is now pushing the hydrooxyquinine sulfate parasite killing drug, which should improve the health of many MAGAites.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 06 2020, @09:00PM (1 child)
Raging case of TDS-- go to the ER immediately!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 07 2020, @12:03AM
The patient's dead.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 06 2020, @02:59PM
Young people are more rash and prone to drama, older folks are more steady. This had been recorded since humanity's first written documents.
It's so basic that it's not even unique to people. Other higher mammals are the same way: chimps, whales, etc.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Hartree on Monday April 06 2020, @03:12PM (6 children)
Do I want to stand up, walk downstairs and get a donut.
Me at 18: Hell yeah!
Me at 58: It's too far. I'll just take a nap first.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday April 06 2020, @04:27PM (3 children)
Laziness is one of the three virtues of a good software developer.
1. Laziness. The first step towards efficiency. (Keep the donuts upstairs so you don't have to go downstairs for them.)
2. Impatience. The first step towards performance optimization.
3. Anti social behavior. Prevents pointless and often stupid interruptions during periods of hyper-focus.
Young people won't believe you if you say you used to get Netflix by US Postal Mail.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 06 2020, @04:55PM (2 children)
Item 3 was originally Hubris, in the list from Perl developers - I don't remember if it was from Larry Wall, or what.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday April 06 2020, @05:08PM
I am not aware of such a list. I constructed my list independently. But now I will do some googling.
Young people won't believe you if you say you used to get Netflix by US Postal Mail.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday April 06 2020, @05:10PM
I think I found it [threevirtues.com].
Young people won't believe you if you say you used to get Netflix by US Postal Mail.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday April 06 2020, @05:33PM (1 child)
You only tell part of the truth.
Me at 18: Hell yeah! and RUN downstairs, where I snatched up a dozen or more donuts just to RUN back up the stairs.
Me at 58: It's too far. I'll just take a nap first. Then, I'll go down for dinner, and bring back a dozen donuts.
Seriously, what red-blooded American eats just one donut?
Even more seriously, I've pretty much given up donuts. I guess it's the oil/fat/grease in or on the donuts, but they cause indigestion. For the past couple years, I actually do only eat one, if I eat any. Mostly, I just pass on the donuts. *sigh* Getting old sucks for more reasons than one!
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by cmdrklarg on Monday April 06 2020, @07:55PM
I'm only 51 (only) and the only trouble donuts give me is an expanding waistline. I'll eat more than one only if that's what's for breakfast.
Getting old sucks, but it beats the alternative!
Answer now is don't give in; aim for a new tomorrow.