Psychologists have tried to study how ’happiness’ really works. Their research on this subject reveals that age is a major influence on how people perceive future happiness and satisfaction.

Study leader Margie Lachman, a Brandeis University psychologist, said that the main purpose of the study was to determine whether there were differences in actual and perceived ratings of how satisfied Americans were with their lives over a nine-year period.

She revealed that the research team tested the idea by conducting two surveys, the first in 1995-1996, and the second nine years later, between 2004 and 2006.

In the first survey, people aged 24 to 74 completed a telephone interview and questionnaire. They were asked to rate how satisfied they were with their lives at the time, how satisfied they were with their lives 10 years earlier, and how satisfied they expected to be 10 years later.

In 2004, the participants were asked the same questions again.

With both sets of questionnaires in hand, Lachman and her colleagues were able to compare how subjects felt during the second survey with how they had predicted they would feel at that time.

The researchers found that there were age-related differences in how we view the past and the future.

They observed that Americans aged 65 and older viewed the past and the present as being equally satisfying, but believed that the future would be less satisfying than the present.