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Happy people don't just enjoy life, they also live longer
Last reviewed: 30.06.2025
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A new study has found that people in a good mood are 35% less likely to die in the next five years compared to sad individuals in the same life situation.
The traditional way to measure happiness is to simply ask people about it. However, in recent decades, explains psychologist and epidemiologist Andrew Steptoe of University College London, scientists have realized that this is not very reliable. It is not clear what people are evaluating - their own feelings or their memory of them. And much depends on how and with what respondents compare their life experiences.
The English Longitudinal Study of Ageing has attempted to get more concrete figures. The project has been monitoring more than 11,000 people aged 50 and over since 2002. In 2004, about 4,700 of them gave saliva samples four times a day and simultaneously rated their happiness, excitement, contentment, worry, anxiety and fear. The saliva is still awaiting analysis for stress hormones, but Mr Steptoe’s colleague Jane Wardle has already published the results of the survey in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Of the 924 respondents who had the least positive feelings, 67 (7.3%) died within five years of the survey. In the group with the most positive emotions, the mortality rate was half as low: 50 out of 1,399 people (3.6%) died. Of course, it is quite possible that people who passed away earlier were sad because of a fatal illness or other factors. So the researchers adjusted the results by adjusting for age, gender, demographic factors (income, education), signs of depression, health (including the presence of serious diseases), and lifestyle (smoking, physical activity). But even after this, it turned out that happy people are 35% less likely to die within five years.
Of course, this is not proof that happiness makes people live longer, Mr Steptoe stresses. He also notes: “We certainly don’t want to make people feel guilty if they don’t experience positive emotions to a sufficient degree.” On the other hand, the study once again highlights how important life circumstances are. It is necessary to make sure that older people have enough money and social support, and that everything is in order with access to health care.
Laura Carstensen from Stanford University (USA) welcomes the findings of her colleagues. This year, she published a similar study on a smaller scale in the journal Psychology and Aging. She and her colleagues recorded the emotions of 111 elderly residents of San Francisco five times a day for a week, and then observed them for many years. Indeed, it turned out that happy people live longer.