How Your Well-Being Today Could Shape Your Happiness for Decades, Study Finds

What holds the key to health and happiness? Some people may point to an optimistic outlook. Others may argue that your life experiences matter most, or that personality is the decisive factor.

There is no universal recipe, yet positive psychology has increasingly centred in recent decades on well-being: a concept that covers quality of life, purpose and meaning, one’s personal surroundings, and relationships with other people.

A substantial body of research indicates that positive well-being is associated with important gains in health and longevity. It may also safeguard mental health, including by reducing the risk of depression.

How well-being changes over time

Although much is known about well-being, major questions remain, including how it develops over the years. Does well-being shift across decades, or does it represent a fixed psychological starting point that carries into the future?

The answer remains unclear. Earlier research has produced a range of views that do not always align.

"The extent to which adults sustain psychological well-being across decades – and the role of depression in shaping these trajectories – remains poorly understood," psychologists write in a new study published in Nature Mental Health. The study was led by first author Cassondra Lyman, a mental health researcher at Cornell University.

"Surprisingly, little is known about what factors predict the attainment of high levels of well-being over decades."

The researchers found well-being can change over time, and it is likely to improve if your well-being is low. (maks_d/Unsplash)

To examine how well-being may change with time, and how it relates to depression, Lyman and her colleagues assessed data from 2,420 people enrolled in the Americans' Changing Lives study. This long-term study began in 1986 with a nationally representative group of 3,617 adults.

The team tracked several measures, including life satisfaction, affect, self-acceptance, mastery, and positive relationships. Over 25 years, participants’ well-being followed four distinct trajectories.

Four long-term well-being trajectories

For the majority of people analysed, around 60 percent, well-being was broadly steady over time.

This group generally began with moderate well-being and maintained relatively stable levels. However, persistent well-being did not necessarily mean high well-being: roughly one quarter of this group consistently had low levels of well-being.

The second-largest group included around 30 percent of participants. They started the study with low initial well-being, but their well-being rose gradually over time.

A third group, accounting for around 8 percent of people, initially had high well-being that fell sharply before eventually stabilising.

The final group comprised only around 2 percent of the cohort. Its members began with very low well-being and showed marked improvement, although half of them were unable to maintain those gains, which declined with time.

Overall, the researchers determined that a person’s well-being at baseline was the strongest predictor of the direction in which their well-being would change, such as from high to low or the reverse.

"People with lower baseline well-being were more likely to experience improvements in well-being, and people with elevated baseline depressive symptoms were more likely to experience change in well-being," the researchers write.

"Thus, people with both low well-being and elevated depressive symptoms at baseline had the highest odds of experiencing marked improvements in well-being."

Related: A Biological Mechanism Linking Childhood Trauma to Future Health Has Been Discovered

Low well-being and prospects for improvement

One particularly encouraging implication of the study, especially for people experiencing depression, is that well-being can get better over time. Indeed, improvement is more likely when a person’s well-being is low.

Of the participants examined, 57 percent of those with low well-being and elevated depression symptoms at baseline experienced increases in well-being during the 25-year analysis.

For future work, the researchers propose that identifying the well-being trajectory a person is following could help show when treatment interventions may be beneficial. It could serve as a type of screening tool to guide the choice of later therapies.

The findings are published in Nature Mental Health.

This article was fact-checked and edited by Rebecca Dyer. Although we take pride in our process, we are only human. If you notice an error, please let us know.