With age, explains Laura Carstensen, founding director of the Stanford Center on Longevity, we “are more likely to experience mixed emotions, happiness and a touch of sadness at the same time. Having mixed emotions helps to regulate emotional states better than extreme emotions.”
Read the full article at AARP.
As we age, the brain‘s processing speed begins to slow, and memory may sometimes slip. But there are other ways that our mental powers grow as we get older. In the current issue of the journal Psychological Science, researchers report that older people (over 65) showed less variability in their cognitive performance across 100 days of testing than did younger people aged 20 to 31.
Our outlook grows rosier as we get older, as demonstrated by a study published last year in the journal Psychology and Aging. Laura Carstensen, a professor of psychology at Stanford University and director of the Stanford Center on Longevity, asked a group of subjects ages 18 to 94 to record their emotional states at five randomly chosen times each day for a one-week period.
Read the full article at Time.
Several recent surveys by AARP have found only slightly more than half of Americans ages 45 and older are confident they have saved enough to cover medical and living expenses in retirement. Reuters spoke with Laura Carstensen, Professor of Psychology at Stanford University, and Director of the Stanford Center on Longevity about how to get more people started on retirement planning.
Read the full article at Reuters.
What books might retirees or soon-to-be retirees find inspiring for the next phase of their lives? The Wall Street Journal put this question to The Experts, an exclusive group of industry, academic and other thought leaders who engage in in-depth online discussions.
Read the full article at The Wall Street Journal.
People are living longer, but that doesn’t mean advisers will see more clients losing their cognitive abilities, including the capacity to make their own financial decisions. “We may be jumping the gun” in expecting that, psychologist Laura Carstensen told advisers at a conference in Las Vegas, Financial Planning reported.
Read the full article at The Wall Street Journal.
The good news: We’re living longer than ever. The bad news: We’re living longer than ever.
In an oversimplified way, that was the message from Laura Carstensen, director of Stanford University’s Center on Longevity, in her remarks to this year’s Aging in America conference here, sponsored by the American Society on Aging.
Carstensen, a well-known researcher who delights in debunking stereotypes of older adults, had less of the expected “older is better” happy talk, and more of the “it’s time to deal with how our culture has changed” message.
Read the full article at AARP.
In this two-part series, Marilyn Powell talks to psychologists, sociologists, neuroscientists – and the wise that dwell among us – about a very old topic. What they have discovered about the nature of wisdom and being wise will enlighten and surprise you. Among the participants was Center on Longevity Founding Director Laura Carstensen.
Listen to the full discussion at CBC Radio.
This story is part of Money magazine’s retirement special Dream big, act now: Six secrets of retirement, which lays out the key drivers of retirement happiness — including your investments, health, career, family, midlife changes and debt — and what you can do about them.
Healthy Living: Key to a Happy Retirement
“DNA isn’t your destiny,” says Laura Carstensen of the Stanford Center on Longevity. “Research shows a very small number of factors make a big difference.” Those probably won’t come as a surprise: whether you smoke, how much you drink, your weight, and your exercise routine (you’ve got one, right?).
Read more at CNN Money.
Center on Longevity Founding Director Laura Carstensen was listed in AARP’s “The Influentials: 50 Over 50” List. Among those listed are U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, political satirist and talk show host Jon Stewart and legendary musician Bruce Springsteen.
“On Wall Street, in Washington and beyond, these folks have a huge impact on our daily lives and futures.”
See the full list at AARP.
In studies of peer groups, Laura L. Carstensen, a psychology professor who is the director of the Stanford Center on Longevity in California, observed that people tended to interact with fewer people as they moved toward midlife, but that they grew closer to the friends they already had.
Read the full article at The New York Times.