Emotional Intelligence Peaks as We Enter Our 60s, Research Suggests

[The Straight Story]

Emotional Intelligence Peaks as We Enter Our 60s, Research Suggests

Older people have a hard time keeping a lid on their feelings, especially when viewing heartbreaking or disgusting scenes in movies and reality shows, psychologists have found. But they're better than their younger counterparts at seeing the positive side of a stressful situation and empathizing with the less fortunate, according to research from the University of California, Berkeley.

A team of researchers led by UC Berkeley psychologist Robert Levenson is tracking how our emotional strategies and responses change as we age. Their findings -- published over the past year in peer-review journals -- support the theory that emotional intelligence and cognitive skills can actually sharpen as we enter our 60s, giving older people an advantage in the workplace and in personal relationships.

"Increasingly, it appears that the meaning of late life centers on social relationships and caring for and being cared for by others," Levenson said. "Evolution seems to have tuned our nervous systems in ways that are optimal for these kinds of interpersonal and compassionate activities as we age."

In the first study, researchers looked at how 144 healthy adults in their 20s, 40s and 60s reacted to neutral, sad and disgusting film clips. In particular, they examined how participants used techniques known as "detached appraisal," "positive reappraisal" and "behavior suppression." Heading up that study was Michelle Shiota, now an assistant professor of psychology at Arizona State University. The findings were published in the journal, Psychology and Aging.


http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/12/101216142534.htm

[lunatica]

1. Well that puts me right smack dab in my emotional prime!

I think it's true, but mostly I thought it was because of it as a result of being post menopausal which means raging hormones don't play a major role in my life anymore. And there's the experience factor too.

Whatever it is I like being in my 60s quite a bit. There's a feeling of having consolidated experience and having rendered it into a workable tool. There's a body of experience that's usable in practical ways.

[hobbit709]

2. How does that explain teabaggers?

[Evasporque]

3. They obviously have not emotionally matured....and never will.

Too selfish. That is why they will die lonely.

[whathehell]

4. They are in a minority..n/t

[soryang]

5. Teabaggers are psychopathic as a mob group think

This is a principle of political propaganda.  This was Edward
Bernays chief contribution to "public relations." 
The uncontrolled id operates in the aggregate.   Arendt
explains the "mass mind" very well in the Origins of
Totalitarianism.

[Le Taz Hot]

6. And yet our society

routinely kicks that age group the curb and labels them irrelevant.