How can older people contribute to their own happiness and health?

Thanks to international research, we know that people who are happier are also healthier in many ways. Economists are particularly interested in happiness as a measure of national wellbeing. However, there has been little research conducted on how people can make themselves happier.

Some people are just born happier and so there seems to be a genetic component which sets a personal level of happiness to which we return, even after serious life events. However, there are differences in levels of happiness that are not completely explained by our genetic predisposition. Psychologists have seized upon the notion of activities chosen to make us happy, as a promising area for intervention.

Annette Henricksen began her PhD research by exploring the happiness-enhancing activities that older adults engage in. First, she interviewed older people to find that there are different activities that people use to deliberately make themselves happy: activities with people, hobbies and sports, having positive thoughts and attitudes, and working on personal goals. Religious and spiritual activities, and activities suited to individual talents, were related to all of these types of activities.

These findings were used as the basis for a new measure of happiness enhancing activities that was included in the 2010 questionnaire. Annette’s findings from using this measure showed that activities related to being with other people, and those activities suited to a person’s own talents, were the most strongly related to happiness, and subsequently to physical and mental health. Interestingly, positive thinking was not such a helpful activity.

^{Henricksen, A., & Stephens, C. (2010). An exploration of the happiness-enhancing activities engaged in by older adults. Ageing International, 35 (4) 311-326, DOI: 10.1007/s12126-010-9059-y.}