Burned Verses
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What the Longest Happiness Study Reveals About Finding Fulfillment
A new book summarizes the findings from a famous happiness study that began in the 1930s—and explains how you can be happier.
greatergood.berkeley.edu
That’s what inspired the long-running Harvard Study of Adult Development.
Starting in the 1930s, researchers tracked men from different neighborhoods in the Boston area over several decades, asking them to provide regular updates on their lives, including their current health, income, employment, and marital status. The men also filled out questionnaires and participated in interviews where they revealed their fears, hopes, disappointments, accomplishments, regrets, life satisfaction, and much more. This resulted in rich, in-depth data that researchers could use to assess how life circumstances, experiences, and attitudes affect well-being.
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Findings from the study have been parsed over the years as patterns emerged. But now they’ve been put together into a book, The Good Life: Lessons From the World’s Longest Scientific Study of Happiness. Written by the study’s current director and associate director, Robert Waldinger and Marc Schulz, the book not only reveals what factors lead to a “good life,” but also why it’s never too late to nudge our own lives in a happier, healthier direction.
The keys to well-being
It turns out the key to a long, healthy life isn’t necessarily obvious. “Contrary to what many people think, it’s not career achievement, or exercise, or a healthy diet,” write the authors—though those things matter, too, they add. Instead, “one thing continuously demonstrates its broad and enduring importance: Good relationships.”
How can the authors say this so definitively? After all, the study began with only white males in a select geographic area as participants (it’s since been broadened to include others). On the other hand, the authors can point to many other longitudinalstudies representing more diverse groups, all of which conclude the same thing: that human connections are important for healthy development and longevity.
“People who are more connected to family, to friends, and to community, are happier and physically healthier than people who are less well connected,” they write.
This is both good news and bad. It suggests a practical way to improve our lives—by nurturing our relationships, no matter how bad things are. But loneliness and disconnection seem to be rampant in society—in part, the authors suggest, because of a culture that pushes us toward going it alone and overachieving at the expense of our relationships. If we don’t understand what makes us happy, they argue, we may end up choosing unwisely—for example, pursuing high-salaried jobs that take us away from our communities.
Their book acts as a kind of course corrective, countering myths about the good life. They support their assertions with scientific findings from many sources, but also include life stories from the people involved in the Harvard study, sprinkled throughout the book. We learn that some men started out in life advantaged and acquired college degrees or great jobs, but they ended up lonely or dying prematurely. Meanwhile, other participants who’d faced more headwinds early in life fared well, finding a job that brought them meaning or a family life that helped them weather ups and downs.
People’s lives don’t always play out the same, of course. Many circumstances make it easier or harder to preserve our well-being—including whether we’ve suffered from the early loss of a parent, discrimination, child abuse, poverty, or illness. For example, Black Americans are more likely to die younger than white Americans because of the stresses of racism and poorer access to good health care. Yet having positive social ties still makes a difference in survival rates, say the authors, suggesting that relationships make us more resilient in the face of life’s hardships.
talking about this topic. 
of lady that turned 70-something. They showed up and showed out. Family and friends. It was a plethora of older, healthy and active people who likely been friends with one another forever.
