It is mostly the older ones who are happy. “Happiness researcher” Tobias Esch found this out. From a neurobiological perspective, he explains how the feeling of happiness can change over the course of a lifetime.
“Be happy” – that’s what most of us want. But what does happiness actually mean? And how can one reach the state of perfect happiness? Opinions are certainly divided when it comes to the definition of happiness. While some see happiness as an umbrella term for health, carefree and prosperous, others define happiness as a lasting feeling of contentment. Even the United States Declaration of Independence defines The Pursuit of Happiness as the overarching, striving goal of life.
But how does happiness arise in the general context? The newly developed ABC model by Tobias Esch, head of the institute and professor for integrative health care and health promotion at the University of Witten/Herdecke, describes how the feeling of happiness changes over the course of our lives.
He came to the realization that despite physical ailments and chronic illnesses, older people are generally happier and more content than adolescents or young adults. His analyzes describe the so-called “satisfaction paradox” and show that the life satisfaction of older people is biologically determined, but can also be learned.
Esch has recently published a policy paper in the renowned biology journal “Biology” that summarizes the results of his almost 20 years of research on the brain’s reward system and the experience of happiness. Esch distinguishes three types of happiness, which vary in intensity depending on the stage of life:
The result is the so-called “ABC model” of happiness, which has been empirically proven by numerous studies. According to them, happiness is not a cognitive construct, but a feeling that has been shown to be based on the physiological activity of the brain’s neurobiological reward and motivation systems. Traces of this system are found in even the simplest living beings.
“Happiness changes its ‘color’ over the course of life,” Esch summarizes the results of his research:
“Whereas momentary happiness is characterized by intense, pleasant, and euphoric, but fleeting moments, life satisfaction is more profound, enduring, and subtle, characterized by feelings of acceptance, belonging, calm, and arriving.
It seems as if we get better and better at being content and happy as we get older,” summarizes the doctor, health researcher and founder of the Witten university outpatient clinic. Only a few years before death does life satisfaction statistically decrease again, for example due to the increase in illnesses in the so-called ‘fourth age’.
The development of happiness and contentment throughout the lifespan often resembles a U-curve that appears independent of good health. The decrease in life satisfaction from early adulthood to middle age is more pronounced in male participants than in female participants. Both men and women share the fundamental finding of higher life satisfaction in the second, supposedly ‘better’ half of life, but the specific course of the curve makes them different. There can be many reasons for this, which have not yet been fully elucidated. Certainly biological, but also psychosocial factors play a role here.
Neurobiological processes thus shape our ‘maturation’ over the lifespan by chemically and biologically rewarding the ‘right’ behaviors and associated experiences. Nevertheless, this course of happiness is not completely predetermined, Esch emphasizes: “Meditation and mindfulness techniques as well as religiosity and belief, for example, seem to be able to influence the course of happiness over time. Happiness can be shaped through practice.”
The described ABC model of reward and motivation and its relation to happiness began with observations from basic research. It was derived, for example, from knowledge about which neurotransmitters appeared when in evolution and which metabolic pathways were interconnected.
Large clinical (empirical) longitudinal data sets, for example the “Nurses Health Study” (Harvard Medical School, among others) or the “Grant Study” (Harvard Study of Adult Development) as well as the UK Million Women Study confirm the assumptions of the ABC model. In the meantime, current findings show that such a U-curve of happiness can be found in almost all populations and countries in the world.
