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Researchers from the University of Edinburgh found happiness in old age was not associated with lifelong intelligence in a group of healthy men and women living in Scotland.
"If you are 80 and healthy, then your satisfaction with how your life has turned out bears no relation to how you scored on an IQ test recently or 70 years ago," says researcher Ian Deary.
Researchers compared satisfaction in old age with intelligence in a group of 550 healthy men and women with no signs of dementia who were born in Scotland in 1921.
Each of the participants had their mental abilities tested at age 11 and again at about age 80 when they also filled out a questionnaire on life satisfaction.
After researchers converted the test scores to IQs and adjusted them for age, they found satisfaction with life or happiness in old age was not related to intelligence across the person's life span.
The results of the study appear in the July 16 issue of the British Medical Journal.
Posted by Kevin Kelly at
July 21, 2005 09:11 AM