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DR@W forum: Andrew Oswald (Department of Economics)
Andrew Oswald
The Midlife Crisis in Humans and Other Animals
Andrew Oswald will describe one of the most striking unexplained phenomena of social and behavioural science. There is growing evidence, from various research teams and for dozens of countries, that human happiness and mental health are approximately U-shaped through life. The low point is reached around people's late 40s. Andrew Oswald will show in the talk that this pattern is also true of the great apes (his paper on this just appeared in PNAS, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA). He will try to summarise where the debate stands and lead a discussion on what social scientists should make of it. He will talk for only 20 minutes.