A new study suggests that as we get older, we increasingly think of the world as generally good, and those of us who do are happier.

The study, published earlier this year in the journal Psychology and Aging, examined roughly 2,000 people over a two-year period. Researchers Michael Poulin at the University of Michigan and Roxane Silver at UC Irvine gave participants several surveys that asked them about their well-being, how religious they were, and whether they thought the world and human nature were basically good.