“Aging’s all right,” the late President George H.W. Bush once said. “Better than the alternative.”
But what’s even better than “better than the alternative”? Realizing that as you get older you actually do get better—at least in some ways—and that there’s scientific research to back up that notion.
The latest example comes from the journal Intelligence, in which psychologists Gilles Gignac of the University of Western Australia and Marcin Zajenkowski of the University of Warsaw in Poland say they’ve determined that “for many of us, overall psychological functioning actually peaks between ages 55 and 60.”
Peak performance
Gignac and Zajenkowski compiled results from 10 existing studies—representing data from a total of 321,661 people—and quantified and standardized them.
Their goal was to identify 16 “well-established psychological traits” that they could measure and assign scores to — things that “represent enduring characteristics rather than temporary states, have well-documented age trajectories, and are known to predict real-world performance,” as Gignac explains in an accompanying article.
Among them were core cognitive abilities along with “the so-called ‘big five’ personality traits—extraversion, emotional stability, conscientiousness, openness to experience, and agreeableness.”
Reviewing all the other studies, they concluded that people reach their peak in many of these key traits later in life than some might suspect.
Overall, they suggest that peak performance and overall mental functioning generally occurs for most people somewhere between ages 55 and 60, when you combine measures of both cognitive and personality traits.
Different trajectories
The researchers found that different abilities peak at different ages:
Early to mid-20s: peak for fluid intelligence (reasoning, memory, and processing speed)
Age 60: moral reasoning
Mid-60s: crystallized intelligence (vocabulary, knowledge)
Age 65: conscientiousness
Age 65: financial literacy
Age 75: emotional stability
Into the 80s: “capacity to resist cognitive biases.”
Of course, the physical peak occurs much earlier.
I’ve finally admitted to myself that I’ll probably never beat some of my PRs from the early 2000s—although, in practice, many people who make healthier choices later in life do wind up in better physical shape than they were personally at earlier ages.
“It should be emphasized that not all individuals experience cognitive or personality change at the same rate or magnitude,” Gignac and Zajenkowski write in the study. “Longitudinal research shows substantial variability in aging trajectories, with some people maintaining high levels of functioning well into late life.”
Late bloomers
Still, Charles Darwin was 50 before he published On the Origin of Species, Beethoven was 53—and deaf—when he premiered his Ninth Symphony.
Ray Kroc was 52 when he met the McDonald brothers and began building his fast-food empire. Sam Walton opened the first Walmart at 44. Vera Wang became a fashion designer at 40.
Come to think of it, I was in my 40s before I started writing for digital media—a milestone that changed my career trajectory in retrospect.
“History is full of people who reached their greatest breakthroughs well past what society often labels as ‘peak age,’” Gignac writes. “Perhaps it’s time we stopped treating midlife as a countdown and started recognizing it as a peak.”
Better than the alternative.
7 other things
Is the shutdown over? After 41 days, the Senate on Monday cleared a critical hurdle to passing a bipartisan deal to end it. Democrats got basically nothing from the fight, capitulating for just the promise of a vote on health insurance subsidies. But, everyone agrees it’s unlikely to pass. (NYT)
All writing is autobiography, I admit” With no extended subsidy my family’s health insurance is set to go up about $15,000 next year, basically 2X what we pay now. Millions of other Americans are also now bracing for sharp increases. (CNBC)
It will take a while for air traffic to return to normal. President Trump threatened to dock the pay of air traffic controllers who called in sick during the hiatus: “For those that did nothing but complain ... I am NOT HAPPY WITH YOU,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. He said he’s recommending $10,000 bonuses for controllers who did show up to work every day despite not being paid at the time. (Axios)
One more DC-type thing: Trump pardoned his former personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and others accused of backing efforts to overturn the 2020 election. It’s largely symbolic since these are mostly state charges, and they’ve stalled in most cases. (AP)
Honestly, we need more stuff like this: Singles night at San Francisco’s hot new club. (It’s a Costco.) The gonzo event turned out to be marketing for a dating app, but the mingling in the grocery aisles was real. (SF Standard)
Where are the flying cars? An answer, sort-of-ish: How A Loophole Lets You Fly This Electric VTOL (that’s “vertical take-off and landing” craft) Without A Pilot’s License. (Jalopnik)
Finally, it’s Veteran’s Day (Remembrance Day in Canada). Raise a glass of whatever to everyone you know who, once upon a time, swore an oath to protect their country against all enemies. Heck, maybe hug them. Then, maybe get them some freebies. (USA Today)
Thanks for reading. Photo by benjamin lehman on Unsplash. I wrote about some of this Inc.com. See you in the comments!