These findings suggest a differential impact of cognitive and emotional well-being on mortality and suggest that in middle-aged adults the effects of SWB on mortality are attenuated by self-rated health and physical activity. The study underscores the importance of SWB for health and longevity, particularly for older adults.

Losing a spouse is among the most devastating events that may occur in people's lives. We use longitudinal data from , participants in the German Socio-economic Panel Study (SOEP) to examine (a) how life satisfaction changes with the experience of spousal loss; (b) whether socio-demographic factors and social and health resources moderate spousal loss-related changes in life satisfaction; and (c) whether extent of anticipation, reaction and adaptation to spousal loss are associated with mortality. Results reveal that life satisfaction shows anticipatory declines about two and a half years prior to (anticipation), steep declines in the months surrounding (reaction) and lower levels after spousal loss (adaptation). Older age was associated with steeper anticipatory declines, but less steep reactive declines. Additionally, younger age, better health, social participation and poorer partner health were associated with better adaptation. Higher pre-loss life satisfaction, less steep reactive declines and better adaptation were associated with longevity. The discussion focuses on the utility of examining the interrelatedness among anticipation, reaction and adaptation to further our understanding of change in life satisfaction in the context of major life events.KEY WORDS -anticipation of major life events, bereavement, hedonic treadmill, subjective wellbeing, German Socio-economic Panel Study, SOEP.

No abstract

Life satisfaction and control beliefs are established indicators of successful aging and predict mortality. However, it has not yet been examined whether they independently predict mortality or interact. We examined main and interaction effects using Cox proportional hazards models in a sample of older adults (N = 1402; age range: 65-91). Only the interaction of life satisfaction and control beliefs significantly predicted mortality when controlling for socio-demographic variables and health. These findings suggest that detrimental effects of low control beliefs can be buffered by life satisfaction, and unexpectedly, that high levels of both factors are not most protective against mortality.

Sehnsucht, the longing or yearning for ideal yet seemingly unreachable states of life, is a salient topic in German culture and has proven useful for understanding self-regulation across adulthood in a German sample (e.g., Scheibe, Freund, & Baltes, 2007). The current study tested whether findings for German samples could be generalized to the more individualistic and agentic U.S. American culture. Four samples of U.S. American and German participants (total N = 1,276) age 18 to 81 years reported and rated their 2 most important life longings and completed measures of subjective well-being and health. Measurement equivalence was established at the level of factor loadings for central life longing characteristics. German and U.S. American participants did not differ in self-reported ease of identifying personal life longings or their intensity. In comparison to Germans, however, U.S. Americans associated life longings less with utopian, unattainable states and reported less salience of the concept in everyday life. Associations with measures of adaptation suggest that life longings can be both functional and dysfunctional for development in both cultures.