October 16, 2025, 10:58 am | Read time: 4 minutes
They say wisdom comes with age. A new study confirms that our social intelligence and life skills peak between the ages of 55 and 66. Over 70, we are emotionally the most stable. These are all good reasons not to fear getting older.
Was Udo Jürgens right after all? With his famous song line “At 66, life begins,” he wasn’t entirely wrong, as two researchers from the University of Warsaw and the University of Western Australia show.1 What exactly the increase in intelligence with age means and what insights can be drawn from the study for one’s own life is explained by FITBOOK author Friederike Ostermeyer.
When in Life Do People Reach Their “Cognitive Functioning Optimum”?
The two researchers, Gilles Gignac and Marcin Zajenkowski, wanted to find out: When in life do people reach their “cognitive functioning optimum”? That is, the phase when thinking, personality, and decision-making ability best work together. There are many individual studies that deal with specific aspects of cognitive abilities, such as IQ or personality development. While we are physically at our peak in our 20s and can remember things better, foresight and satisfaction are often lacking. So far, a comprehensive picture that integrates all these aspects has been missing. Additionally, psychology has yet to establish a unified measure that simultaneously represents cognition, judgment, and personality. The authors wanted to develop a new index to make this measurable for the first time: the Cognitive-Personality Functioning Index (CPFI).
Also interesting: Our Biological Age Makes Several Leaps Throughout Life
Cognitive-Personality Functioning Index (CPFI)
For their new CPFI index, Gignac and Zajenkowski identified 16 psychological dimensions. These include logical thinking, memory performance, processing speed, knowledge, and emotional intelligence. Psychological stability, conscientiousness, empathy, and openness to experiences were also included. They then searched for existing large-scale studies that dealt with one or more of these components and also considered age. Using a computer model, they combined 16 curves to more accurately depict the course of the CPFI over the lifespan. To achieve a more stable result, they weighted cognitive abilities and personality traits more heavily in their calculations. Interestingly, this changed the overall result very little.
Major Study Reveals What Celibacy Indicates About Health, Psychology, and Environment
What Is Asperger’s Syndrome?
Age and Intelligence—Do We Have a “Golden Middle Age”?
It’s true that at 25, we are particularly mentally fit, but the lack of emotional maturity can lead to unwise decisions. This maturity increases in the 30s with growing experience and knowledge, but it remains improvable. According to the measurements, we only achieve an optimal balance of experience, knowledge, judgment, and sufficient mental flexibility (social intelligence) between the ages of 55 and 60. This explains why we have the best leadership and mentoring qualities during this phase of life. The researchers conclude that we can continuously improve certain skills well beyond midlife. Lifelong learning is worthwhile. Cognitive training, further education, or new hobbies can help maintain a high level for a long time. Even beyond 60, emotional stability, judgment, and wisdom tend to increase rather than decrease. This means that we can generally expect a very satisfying final phase of life.
Weaknesses and Strengths of the Study
Every person and every life is unique. However, the newly developed CPFI can only depict an average trend. It is more of a suggestion than a validated standard measure. Therefore, the result is not very suitable for individual predictions. The study merely describes patterns and does not provide neurological or psychological explanations. How we feel or how our intelligence develops with age also depends heavily on cultural background, good or bad to traumatic life experiences, as well as social roles and education. Different lifestyles, family structures, or working conditions can greatly influence the courses.
Nevertheless, the new perspective presented by the researchers highlights something significant. Namely, that our “value” and performance do not depend solely on IQ, but that together with life experience, judgment, self-regulation, and morality, they provide a much more realistic overall picture and apparently strengthen with each additional year of life.
Incidentally, Ludwig van Beethoven composed his famous 9th Symphony at 53, Charles Darwin published his “Origin of Species” at 50, and Laura Ingalls Wilder was 65 when she wrote the first volume of her “Little House” series.