Christina VarvisIt’s a familiar scene; people turn 50 years old, and suddenly there’s a sports car in the driveway, amongst other splurges. Though many might attribute this sudden change in behavior as “the midlife crisis,” several University of Alberta researchers disagree.
A team of researchers from several universities headed by Department of Psychology professor Nancy Galambos authored a study on the change in net happiness from late adolescence to early adulthood. Concluding that happiness actually increases consistently across this period, Galambos and her team posit that the midlife crisis is a concept which needs debunking.
Shichen Fang, a graduate student in the Department of Psychology, said that the normalization of the midlife crises could have significant consequences on mental health.
“People that have a really good reason for being depressed could think it was something that was supposed to happen, and fail to seek proper treatment,” Fang said. “The assumption that there is a midlife crisis, everyone will have one, and you should buy a Porsche, should really be reconsidered.”
The data pool used to come to this conclusion was also unique. Harvey Krahn, a now-retired professor in the psychology department, conducted a massive longitudinal study of Edmontonians for 25 years.
Starting with a cohort of high school seniors from across the city in 1985, the study followed these subjects for a quarter of a decade. Ending in 2010, the study had tracked the 18-year-old students until they were 43 years of age. Also included was a 14-year study of members of the U of A graduating class of ’85.
Though the subjects were surveyed on a variety of topics, one repeated question asked how happy the participants were with their lives. That, Fang said, was the anchor question of the article.
Though this data collection has led to a multitude of studies, it was initially framed as a study of unemployment. Since the study was conducted on a group who experienced one recession when they came of age and another in the mid-2000s, Galambos said that there has been interest from the government in results obtained from the data.
Aside from government interest, Galambos said the availability of locally-gathered data like these had significant positive impact on the university.
“Having a data set like this is not common,” Galambos said. “And giving students and and other colleagues the opportunity to work with this, in many ways, ideal data is great for education.”
Though Galambos and Fang said such a data set means they can keep dreaming up studies almost indefinitely, Fang is in the process of publishing a follow-up study which stems from the results of this article.
“We did a study on the relationship between happiness and civic engagement,” Fang said. “The question is whether being happy makes you participate in more civic activity, or if participating makes you happier.”
As to what students should takeaway from her findings, Galambos had a simple memo.
“The message would be, at least to 20- and 30-year-olds, that life gets better.”
