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RETIREMENT

OLDER PEOPLE GRUMPY? WE DON'T BELIEVE IT

MELDREW: Wrong impression

Wednesday April 30,2008

By Mark Reynolds

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EVEN Victor Meldrew might have trouble believing it, but the bad name he gives the older generation is simply not justified.

According to new research, older people are less likely to be grumpy – because advancing years provide them with a greater sense of peace and calm.

The study goes against the stereotype of the pensioner irritated by the youth of today and struggling to get to grips with new technology, as portrayed by Richard Wilson in the BBC TV comedy One Foot In The Grave.

Scientists now believe that while youth has strength, fun and excitement on its side, growing old brings the benefits of simultaneously providing positive and passive emotions.

Researchers from Texas University studied nearly 1,500 responses to questions asked in a US survey.

They focused on English-speakers aged 18 years and older and the questions centred on emotions.

For example, participants responded to statements such as: “On how many days in the past seven have you felt that you couldn’t shake the blues, felt sad, felt calm, felt outraged, etc?”

Researchers then graded responses into groups such as active, passive, negative and positive.

The results, reported in the journal Social Science and Medicine, show old age is associated with more passive emotions and fewer negative ones.

As a result, emotions that are both active and negative – like anxiety and anger – are more unlikely among the elderly.

Researcher Catherine Ross said: “The positive/passive combination largely implies that contentment, calm and ease are some of the most common emotions felt by older people.”

The team also discovered that women scored significantly lower than men on both positive emotion balance and active emotion balance.

It was also found that the well-educated and those with higher family incomes had significantly more positive emotions than the poor and poorly educated.

So where, oh where, did Victor Meldrew go wrong?