The Happiness Advantage: How a Positive Brain Fuels Success in Work and Life

by Shawn Achor

In 1979, Langer designed a week-long experiment on a group of 75-year-old men.1 The men knew little about the nature of the experiment except that they would be gone for a week at a retreat center, and they could bring along no pictures, newspapers, magazines, or books dated later than 1959. When they arrived, the men were gathered into a room and told that for the next week they were to pretend as though it was the year 1959–a time when these 75-year-old men were merely 55 years young. To reinforce the scenario, they were supposed to dress and act like they did at the time, and they were given ID badges with pictures of themselves in their mid-50s. Over the course of the week, they were instructed to talk about President Eisenhower and other events in their lives that had happened at that time. Some took to referring to their old jobs in the present tense, as if they had never retired. Life and Saturday Evening Post issues from 1959 were displayed on the coffee tables. In short, everything was designed to make them see the world through the lens of being 55.