Why does dancing work? The truth is we’re not sure. Undoubtedly exercise plays a part. Dancing requires participants not only to learn and memorize synchronized coordinated movements but also to muster up the energy to perform them. There are socialization arguments to consider, too. In most of these studies, a room full of people would be dancing, often as partners, requiring at least a two-drink minimum equivalent of social interactivity.
Finally, there is the idea of face-to-face interactions. And here we have something of a surprise. Depending on the style, dancing allows the opportunity for a certain amount of human touch. That’s important for anybody, but it’s wildly important for the elderly. The benefits of touch for senior brains—and just about everybody else’s brains—have been studied in the laboratories of such notable scientists as Dr. Tiffany Field, director of the Touch Research Institute at the University of Miami. She didn’t study dancing. She studied massage, and was among the first to show powerful cognitive and emotional boosts associated with the practice.
Virtually everybody Field has ever tested has shown the benefits of touch, from our oldest citizens in nursing homes to our youngest premature citizens in NICUs (neonatal intensive care units).
Field didn’t have to hire a formal masseuse to get the benefit. Even infrequent touching by nonprofessionals, like your friends, helps cement relationships (if the touch is welcome, not exploitive). Fifteen minutes a day will do. That may help explain the invisible devilry of the dance floor, for you often get and give much more than fifteen minutes of touch.
This leads to some practical advice. If you are a younger person, learn how to dance, then keep up the activity clear into your retirement years. If you are already old enough to think about retirement, this recommendation is even stronger. If you already know how to dance, find a place where you can cut a rug regularly. And if you don’t know how to dance, take a class, then start your rug cutting.
This helps us settle a digital question, too. As you know, I think social media is a country for old men and women, especially poignant for the mobility impaired. Yet the preferential power of face-to-face communication is clear. Whenever there is a choice to have it, choose it. When at all possible, allow other humans to share the same oxygen as you. Yes, such contact has its pitfalls, but it is what the brain needs in its twilight years. You may feel awkward on a dance floor. You may feel awkward talking instead of typing. Yet for the millions of years we have evolved, we had flesh-and-blood interactions, not server-and-CPU interactions.
Considering the power of socialization on the brain, being with each other is the most natural thing in the world.
SUMMARY
Be a friend to others, and let others be a friend to you
• Keep social groups vibrant and healthy; this actually boosts your cognitive abilities as you age.
• Stress-reducing, high-quality relationships, such as a good marriage, are particularly helpful for longevity.
• Cultivate relationships with younger generations. They help reduce stress, anxiety, and depression.
• Loneliness is the greatest risk factor for depression for the elderly. Excessive loneliness can cause brain damage.
• Dance, dance, dance. Benefits include exercise, social interactivity, and an increase in cognitive abilities.
brain rule
Cultivate an attitude of gratitude
Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.
—Mark Twain
Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory.
—Albert Schweitzer
A BIRTHDAY CARD RECENTLY caught my eye: “Grumpy Old Man To-Do List.”
1. Tell kids to get off MY lawn.
2. Scowl at the neighbor.
3. Write SCATHING letter.
4. Disinherit somebody.
5. Go for a long SLOW drive in the passing lane and keep signal on the whole time.
6. Tell kids to get off my lawn AGAIN!
7. Buy more NO TRESPASSING signs!
8. Tell some punk that in my day we had it tough.
9. Grumble grumpily for a while.
You open the card and it says:
10. Have a Happy Birthday!
As this card suggests, with many all-capped letters, older people have a reputation for being grumpy. Is this reputation warranted? Seniors also have a reputation for being kindly, patient, and wise—words not usually associated with grumpiness. That was certainly my experience with my grandparents. From a research point of view, these questions have serious definitional issues. What does happiness even mean? While researchers don’t unanimously agree on definitions, I am going to go with research psychologist Ed Diener, who defines happiness as “subjective well-being.” And with legendary researcher Martin Seligman, who defines optimism as knowing that bad things don’t last forever, that good will return. One is a condition of the present, and the other is an attitude about the future; both perspectives seem useful. As we’ll see, our thirst for optimistic experiences—and our ability to recall them—grow more robust as the years go by.
Onward, mostly upward
Confusion reigned for the longest time about whether people got grumpier or happier or just stayed themselves as they aged. Some studies found that people really fit Beatrix Potter’s classic “grumpy gardener Mr. McGregor” stereotype: they got crankier as they got older. Perhaps this was because the seniors studied lived in an environment of unrelenting arthritis, unrelenting funerals, and unrelenting loneliness. Other studies seemed to show the opposite. People became happier and better adjusted as they aged, becoming the type of sage that actor Morgan Freeman often plays in shows like The Story of God. Perhaps this was because they lived in a world of increasing wisdom, found a way to avoid more heartaches, and became more socially enriched as they shared their insights. Which is it, folks, Beatrix Potter or The Story of God?
Happily, further research provided a clearer picture, and much of it is positive. People really do become happier as they age, but with one important caveat about depression, as I’ll explain shortly. They develop more emotional stability, become more agreeable, are more conscientious. The difference is not small. To take just one psychometric measure, people in their sixties score 69 percent higher than people in their twenties on emotional stability assessments. Seniors score even higher on agreeableness tests.
Why the historical discrepancy? It’s a classic error. Most of the older studies did not take into account the environmental life experiences of those they examined. This includes controlling for what we now call the usual socioeconomic suspects: wealth, gender, race, mood, education, job stability—even year of birth. Seniors born in the Great Depression, for example, don’t have the same happiness profiles (a chart of the years they tended to be most and least happy) as baby boomers, and both have profiles different from millennials’. Whether you have children is a factor, too. Marital satisfaction, which profoundly influences happiness assessments, ebbs and flows depending on the age of the kids you are raising. Marital happiness is highest when the kids are gone, by the way—in the stretch of life between empty nest and retirement. It’s lowest when the kids are teens.
When you wade into the deep end of the statistical pool and take some of these factors into account (as was done in one National Institute on Aging study, which looked at several thousand people