Milestone Age Affects the Role of Health and Emotions in Life Satisfaction: A Preliminary Inquiry.
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 26244348.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0133254 and PMC identifier 4526679.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Jill turns 40. Should this change how she evaluates her life, and would a similar change occur when she turns 41? Milestone age (e.g., 30, 40, 50)--a naturally occurring feature in personal timelines--has received much attention is popular culture, but little attention in academic inquiry. This study examines whether milestone birthdays change the way people evaluate their life. We show that life outlook is impacted by this temporal landmark, which appears to punctuate people's mental maps of their life cycle. At these milestone junctures, people take stock of where they stand and have a more evaluative perspective towards their lives when making life satisfaction judgments. Correspondingly, they place less emphasis on daily emotional experiences. We find that milestone agers (vs. other individuals) place greater weight on health satisfaction and BMI and lesser weight on daily positive emotions in their overall life satisfaction judgments, whereas negative emotions remain influential.
Medical subject headings
- Aging
- Emotions
- Personal Satisfaction
- Quality of Life