Your Response to Stress Improves as You Grow Older

Stress is something no one is new to. Major life events such as the death of a spouse or the start of a new job can take a lot of our attention. Scientists have been able to understand how small daily stressors affect our moods. A professor of human development and family studies at Pennsylvania State University has been following the stressors of daily life in a group of more than 3000 people since 1995. Some of the silver linings of aging have been discovered, and how difficult national or global events can tip the scales against us.

The transcript of the interview has been changed.

You've been following people's daily experiences for 20 years. How has that changed your view of psychology?

A day in the life of an individual is what I try to describe in my work. The ebb and flow of daily experiences is tracked by me. My unit of analysis is not a person but a day.

The more I study this work, the more I realize that people are different from one another. Our identity isn't just who we are based on the average of our experiences, it may be in the range in our behavior, the extent to which we're going up and down

How do you keep track of stress?

People are asked questions at the end of the day. We use Web-based approaches instead of using telephone calls. We ask about how they spent their time, their mood, their physical symptoms, who they interacted with and then ask a lot of questions about the stressors they experienced. The amount of stress hormones in the body can be determined by collecting a sample of saliva.

We have worked with a lot of people. The wonderful participants in the National Study of Daily Experiences have been sharing their lives with me for the past 20 years. It has been a great honor to follow them.

Over the course of 20 years, you published findings from an analysis of 2,745 adults. People seem less stressed as they get older. Is it possible to unpack that?

There is some good news about stress. It seems like it is getting better. Younger people are more exposed to stress than older people are. When you are in your 70s, stressors go down to 20 to 25 percent of days.

We looked at how people respond to stress. Young adults have more distress on days with stressors than older people. When your response to stress gets better with age, it's time to stop the age advantage.

There is an advantage to dealing with stress when you're older.

Three reasons could work together. The social roles people occupy have to do with that. Being a parent of a young child, starting a job, getting into new relationships are some of the roles that can be played when you're young. When you have multiple roles going on at the same time, it can cause stress.

As we get older, we realize that we only have so much time left and want to make the most of it, so we are very motivated to enjoy it.

By virtue of experiences, opportunities and past stressors, we learn how to deal with them and become experts in dealing with daily stressors as we get older.

Research shows older people are happier than younger people.

Physical health decline, loss of friends, being sick, and cognitive decline are things that you shouldn't be looking forward to when you're older. These are things that are unrelated to increased happiness. People get more life satisfaction as they grow older.

There is a point in time when this pattern ceases. There is a decrease in life satisfaction in the 80s and 90s.

Economic and political uncertainty can affect our day to day stress.

The effects of the recession were studied. The data we have shows that adults in 2010 had more stress and were more distressed by it. The use of technologies that have changed social interaction is reflected in this. We can think about how economic downturn and other changes might affect us. It is possible that we won't see much of an age advantage in this period as a result of the Pandemic.

We were surprised that the difference in stress seemed to be concentrated among midlife people. Younger adults just starting their careers and older adults in retirement would be worse off. Adults in their 40s through 60s were more likely to report higher levels of psychological distress. I think it has to do with the social roles of a middle aged person. They worry about their children but also their parents.

Is it a good idea to remove all stressors from our lives?

It may be good to have some daily stress. People who say they don't have stress in their lives think they're lucky. They report less positives in their lives. They have fewer people in their lives.

How you respond to stress affects your health and well- being. It's not the number of stressors but your emotional responses that can cause cardiovascular disease, increase inflammation and contribute to dying earlier.

How should we handle our responses?

People can eat well and get enough sleep at night. Not everyone is able to do them. Individual choice is not the only thing.

Minoritized groups have higher stress reactivity. They don't always have enough money to deal with their own stressors. Your body wants to mobilize energy when it's stressed. The best way to stop this emotional response is to get up and walk. Many people can't just get up in the middle of their work day and walk outside.

We need to talk about how we can give people resources to help them take care of themselves.

Do you work in neuroscience, cognitive science or psychology? Have you read the paper that you want to write about? Suggestions can be sent to Daisy Yuhas at pitch mindmatters@gmail.com