Psychology says the emotional turbulence of youth doesn’t last — older adults report fewer bad days, recover from the bad ones faster, and hold steadier moods than people half their age, as if the heart, unlike the knees, actually improves with wear

Fewer bad days, and the bad ones end soonerThe useful stuff is in the daily diary work. In research that collected saliva samples alongside daily diaries, older adults were measurably less reactive to negative social interactions than younger ones. In one eye-tracking study, students asked to imagine their lives ending in three years began drifting toward positive faces in the same way older adults do naturally. Susan Charles’s strength and vulnerability model makes the point that older adults are excellent at avoiding and defusing stress, and less good at recovering once arousal is high, sustained, and inescapable. One analysis of pandemic-era data found the age advantage in emotional experience narrowed under exactly that kind of grinding, no-exit stress.