When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing(30)
Study after study across an astonishing range of socioeconomic, demographic, and life circumstances has reached the same conclusion: Happiness climbs high early in adulthood but begins to slide downward in the late thirties and early forties, dipping to a low in the fifties.6 (Blanchflower and Oswald found that “subjective wellbeing among American males bottoms out at an estimated 52.9 years.”7) But we recover quickly from this slump, and wellbeing later in life often exceeds that of our younger years. Elliott Jaques was on the right track but aboard the wrong train. Something does indeed happen to us at midlife, but the actual evidence is far less dramatic than his original speculation.
But why? Why does this midpoint deflate us? One possibility is the disappointment of unrealized expectations. In our na?ve twenties and thirties, our hopes are high, our scenarios rosy. Then reality trickles in like a slow leak in the roof. Only one person gets to be CEO—and it’s not going to be you. Some marriages crumble—and yours, sadly, is one of them. That dream of owning a Premier League team becomes remote when you can barely cover your mortgage. Yet we don’t remain in the emotional basement for long, because over time we adjust our aspirations and later realize that life is pretty good. In short, we dip in the middle because we’re lousy forecasters. In youth, our expectations are too high. In older age, they’re too low.8
However, another explanation is also plausible. In 2012, five scientists asked zookeepers and animal researchers in three countries to help them better understand the more than 500 great apes under their collective care. These primates—chimpanzees and orangutans—ranged from infants to older adults. The researchers wanted to know how they were doing. So they asked the human personnel to rate the apes’ mood and wellbeing. (Don’t laugh. The researchers explain that the questionnaire they used “is a well-established method for assessing positive affect in captive primates.”) Then they matched those happiness ratings to the ages of the great apes. The resulting chart is shown here.9
That raises an intriguing possibility: Could the midpoint slump be more biology than sociology, less a malleable reaction to circumstance than an immutable force of nature?
LIGHTING CANDLES AND CUTTING CORNERS
Atraditional box of Hanukkah candles contains forty-four candles, a number determined with Talmudic precision. Hanukkah lasts eight consecutive nights, and Jews who celebrate the holiday mark their observance each evening by lighting candles positioned in a candleholder known as a menorah. On the first night, celebrants light one candle, two candles on the second night, and so on. Because observers light each candle with a helper candle, they end up using two candles on the first night, three on the second night, and eventually nine candles on the eighth night, yielding the following formula:
2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 7 + 8 + 9 = 44
Forty-four candles means that when the holiday ends, the box will be empty. Yet, in Jewish households across the world, families routinely finish Hanukkah with candles left in the box.
What gives? How to solve this mystery of the lights?
Diane Mehta offers part of the answer. Mehta is a novelist and poet who lives in New York. Her mother is a Jew from Brooklyn, her father a Jain from India. She grew up in New Jersey, where she celebrated Hanukkah, eagerly lit the candles, and “got things like socks as gifts.” When she had a son, he, too, loved lighting the candles. But as time passed—job changes, a divorce, the usual ups and downs of life—her candle lighting became less regular. “I start off getting excited,” she told me. “But after a couple of days, I taper off.” She doesn’t light the candles when her son is staying with his dad rather than with her. But sometimes, toward the end of the holiday, she says, “I’ll notice that it’s still Hanukkah and will light the candles again. I’ll say to my son, ‘It’s the last night. We should do it.’”
Mehta often begins Hanukkah with zest and ends with resolve but slacks in the middle. She sometimes neglects lighting candles on nights three, four, five, and six—and thus ends the holiday with candles still in the box. And she’s not alone.
Maferima Touré-Tillery and Ayelet Fishbach are two social scientists who study how people pursue goals and adhere to personal standards. A few years ago, they were searching for a real-world domain in which to explore these two ideas when they realized that Hanukkah represented an ideal field study. They tracked the behavior of more than two hundred Jewish participants who observed the holiday, measuring whether—and, crucially, when—they lit the candles. After eight nights of collecting data, here’s what they found:
On the first night, 76 percent of the participants lit the candles.
On the second night, the percentage dropped to 55.
On the ensuing nights, fewer than half the participants lit the candles—with the number climbing above 50 percent again only on night eight.
Over the course of Hanukkah, the researchers conclude, “adherence to standards followed a U-shaped pattern.”10
But perhaps this slump had an easy explanation. Maybe the less religious participants, unlike their more observant counterparts, were opting out in the middle and lowering the average. Touré-Tillery and Fishbach tested for that possibility. They found that the U-shaped pattern became more pronounced for the most religious participants. They were even more likely than others to light the candles on nights 1 and 8. But in the middle of Hanukkah, “their behavior was almost undistinguishable from that of less religious participants.”11