ABSTRACT
Happier volunteers were more confident about their ability to manage their lives. A recent study concluded that “self-report measures about cognition ought to be interpreted as expressing worries about one’s cognition rather than measuring cognitive abilities themselves”. Older volunteers score worse if they take tests immediately after watching videos that subtly portray the old as less competent than the young. People of all ages score lower on memory tasks after viewing videos that include no mention of memory or competence but leave them feeling very slightly sad. Many convincing studies also show that the thoughtless biases of others can undermine us. Young black American adults perform less well on mental tasks after being exposed to material that hints at negative stereotypes of their race. In many surveys, people’s self-ratings of well-being remain significant predictors of how long they have to live, even after differences in their levels of depression and socio-economic disadvantage have been taken into account.
