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Science reveals 10 great things that happen after 30
There's nothing like turning 30 to make you question how you've spent your time and think hard about what you want to prioritize next.
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It's easy to feel like you're behind on everything. But scientists have studied a range of physical and mental traits and found peaks from childhood straight through to old age.
And there's good news: It's not all downhill after 30.
Of course, these are all averages — you may have already experienced these years ago, or you may hit a milestone decade or two after the average, and that's totally fine.
But if you've been feeling stressed about the big 3-0, take a deep breath and scroll through some of the peaks you still have ahead of you.
First of all, know that it's not just you — there really is something daunting about approaching a round birthday. Researchers looking at people who were 29 (sure), but also 39, 49, or 59 found that they were more likely to make a big life change, good or bad. They found that these "9-enders" were overrepresented in groups of people running a marathon for the first time, for example. So don't beat yourself up for obsessing about a looming birthday and try to channel that antsiness into something positive.
People's ability to quickly and accurately recognize faces of strangers being shown to them a second time in a lab test peaked at age 31.
According to a study by the National Bureau of Economic Research, the average Nobel Prize winning research is done when someone is 40 years old. If you don't think you're in line to win a Nobel, the study authors say the concept still holds — their findings mirrored those of other career studies.
Scientists gathered about 10,000 people, showed them pictures cropped very tightly around the subject's eyes, and asked them to describe what emotion the person pictured was feeling. They found a long plateau in people's 40s and 50s where the ability to correctly identify emotions based only on the eyes was strongest.
Sure, you learned your times tables in elementary school — but it turns out 50-year-olds are best at answering arithmetic questions on the fly.
According to one German study, life satisfaction peaks at 23. But, after a dip in middle age, life satisfaction peaked again around 69 years old. Even more intriguingly, actual life satisfaction was higher for people over 60 than people 55 and up had predicted they would feel five years down the line.
It turns out people's scores on multiple choice vocabulary tests keep climbing into their late 60s and early 70s. And you don't even need to sit around reading the dictionary all day to make it happen. Although it can't hurt.
In a Gallup survey, an incredible two thirds of Americans over 65 said they always like the way they look. Men's self-perception appears to peak in their early 80s, when three quarters agree with the statement "You always feel good about your physical appearance." Women's rates of agreeing with that statement is a little below 70% as soon as they hit 75 years old.
It turns out life really is the best classroom. A team of psychologists asked people to read about a conflict, then asked them questions about it. The scientists then analyzed the responses for characteristics like being able to take someone else's point of view, anticipating change, considering multiple possible turnouts, acknowledging uncertainty, and searching for compromise. They found that the oldest group they studied, people who were between 60 and 90 years old, did better than other ages on almost every count.
In a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, scientists asked people to picture a ten-step ladder, with the best possible life on the top rung and the worst possible life on the bottom rung. The oldest group they studied, of 82- to 85-year-olds, saw their own lives at the highest average rung number, about 7.
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