What makes people happy? On quite a few occasions, I’ve posted at DI with regard to ideas that I learned through reading various books and articles (a search for “happiness” in the DI search box will give you dozens of articles). What does that reveal about me, I wonder?
Today, I had the pleasure of reading an extraordinarily thoughtful article on this same topic: “What Makes Us Happy?” by Joshua Wolf Shenk appears in the June 2009 edition of The Atlantic. You’ll find an abridged edition of the article here [1].
Shenk’s article is anchored by the Harvard Study of Adult Development, the longest running longitudinally study of mental and physical well-being in history. It was begun in 1937 in order to study “well-adjusted Harvard sophomores (all male), and it has followed its subject for more than 70 years.” The study was originally known as “The Grant Study,” in that it was originally funded by W.T. Grant. Despite all odds, the study has survived to this day–many of the subjects are now in their upper 80’s. Along the way, the study was supplemented with a separate study launched in 1937 dedicated to studying juvenile delinquents in inner-city Boston (run by criminologists Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck).
[2]You’ll enjoy Joshua Shenk’s work on many levels. He writes with precision, providing you with a deep understanding of the featured longitudinal studies. You will also enjoy his seemingly effortless ability to spin engaging stories (there are dozens of stories within his article) and his exceptional skill at crafting highly readable prose. I’m writing this post as a dare, then. Go forth and read Shenk’s article and I guarantee that you will be thoroughly enriched and appreciative.
The Atlantic also provided a video interview of George Vaillant, now 74, who since 1967 has dedicated his career to running and analyzing the Grant Study. As you’ll see from Shenk’s article, Vaillant is an exceptional storyteller himself. The Atlantic article, then, might remind you of one of those Russian dolls, and that is a storyteller telling the story of another storyteller who tell stories of hundreds of other storytellers. For more than 40 years, Vaillant has not only gathered reams of technical data, but he has poured his energy into interviewing the subjects and their families and melding all of that data into compellingly detailed vignettes of the subjects. Telling stories is not ultimately what the study was supposed to be about, of course, and Vaillant also tells us what those stories mean for the rest of us. Truly, what makes people happy? Vaillant offers answers that you will be tempted to immediately apply to your own situation.
Vaillant has a lot to say about “adaptations,” how people respond to the challenges they face in life. As a Shenk explains, Vaillant sees mental adaptations as analogous to biological processes. To stay healthy, we must deal with emotional onslaughts, but there are better and worse ways to do this. Some of the unhealthy adaptations would include paranoia, hallucinations or megalomania. Almost as bad are “immature adaptations” such as acting out, hypochondria, projection and fantasy. For normal people, neurotic defenses are common, is things such as intellectualization, dissociation [3]and repression. The best way to adapt, however would be to employ altruism, humor, suppression, sublimation [4]or planning for the future.
Valliant has identified seven factors that predict healthy aging:
Employing mature adaptations was one . The others were education, stable marriage, not smoking, not abusing alcohol, some exercise, and healthy weight. Of the 106 Harvard man who had five or six of these factors in their favor at age 50, half ended up at 80 as what Vaillant called “happy-well” and only 7.5% as “sad-sick.” Meanwhile, of the men who had three or fewer of the health factors at age 50, none ended up “happy-well” at 80. Even if they had been in adequate physical shape at 50, the men who had three or fewer protective factors were three times as likely to be dead at 80 as those with four or more factors. . . . Cholesterol levels at age 50 have nothing to do with health in old age. While social ease correlates highly with good psychosocial adjustment in college and early adulthood, it significantly diminishes over time. The predictive importance of childhood temperament also diminishes over time: shy, anxious kids tend to do poorly in young adulthood, but by age 70, are just as likely as the outgoing kids to be “happy-well.”
There is a treasure trove of other critical findings in the Atlantic article. You’ll find that ongoing exercise in college predicts late-life mental health. As you will probably expect, depression turns out to be a major risk factor for physical health. Personality traits largely predicted who would become a Democrat (those who are sensitive, cultural and introspective) and Republicans (pragmatic and organized) (this correlates with findings by Frank Sulloway [5]). Vaillant has found that alcoholism is “the horse and not the cart a pathology.” It is often post hoc confabulation that leads people to argue that they started drinking only after a problem arose and provoked it.
Vaillant also concludes that warm social connections are critical to happiness-if not found in parents, they can be based on relationships with siblings, friends and extended relatives). In conclusion, Vaillant holds that “the only thing that really matters in life are your relationships with other people.”
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