Exercise 6. Elaborate the importance of happiness. Think of your ingredients of happiness

Exercise 7. What do you think is the happiest time of a person’s life – when a person is young or when he / she is old? In groups suggest the pros and cons of these ages.

Exercise 8. Listen to the survey findings; fill in the script and compare your suggestions. Then answer the questions after it:

Are people 1) … or more happy the older they get? If you answered 2) …, then you were right, based on a study in 2008. It found that people generally become happier and experience less worry after age 3) …. In fact, it found that by the age of 4) …, people are happier with their life than they were at eighteen.

The 5) … came from a Gallup survey of more than three hundred forty thousand adults in 6) … in two thousand eight. At that time, the people were between the ages of 7) … and eighty-five.

Arthur Stone in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science at Stony Brook University in New York led the study. His team found that 8) … were highest among adults between the ages of twenty-two and twenty-five. Stress levels dropped sharply after people reached their 9) ….

Happiness was highest among 10) … and those in their early seventies. But the people least likely to report feeling negative emotions were those in their seventies and eighties.

So why would happiness increase with 11) …? One theory is that, as people get older, they become 12) … for what they have and have better control of their emotions. They also spend less time thinking about bad experiences.

The findings appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

1. How many people participated in the 2008 survey?

2. At what age was happiness highest?

3. What are the reasons of happiness increase according to the survey?