Longitudinal study tells us what makes people happy

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. 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). 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,

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Republican Scientists are rare

PEW has issued new research findings showing that relatively few scientists are political conservatives. Only 6% of scientists identify themselves as Republicans:

Most scientists identify as Democrats (55%), while 32% identify as independents and just 6% say they are Republicans. When the leanings of independents are considered, fully 81% identify as Democrats or lean to the Democratic Party, compared with 12% who either identify as Republicans or lean toward the GOP.

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Fun gets it done.

When I was in seventh grade, I got a C in my typing class. I could not apply myself to the dull Mavis Beacon exercises intended to impart perfect QWERTY precision. I hen-pecked my way through the course (badly), always sneaking spare minutes of games like Brick-Out whenever the instructor walked out of view. I found the class utterly miserable, and I did not learn how to type. I now type proficiently and do not see the task as a chore. For the purpose of this writing, I pulled up a quick typing test and achieved a speed of 95 WPM- pretty decent. In the old Mavis Beacon days, I probably two-finger-typed a speed of 25 or 30 WPM. What magic instructive program brought me up to speed?

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China works to save its adolescents from Internet addiction

What do you do with a teenager that spends 10 hours a day playing online games. What if a teenager is unable to pull herself away from her Facebook account? The Chinese government is taking this ramped up usage of the Internet seriously, according to an article in the June 26, 2009 edition of Science (available online only to subscribers). The Science article focuses on treatment efforts by the General Hospital of Beijing's Addiction Medicine Center (AMC). The article quotes Tao Ran, a Chinese psychiatrist, who estimates that 5 million of the country's 300 million Internet users are "Internet addicts," and that adolescents are especially vulnerable. The concern is that excessive use of the Internet deprives people of valuable real life social interactions. Of the more than 3,000 cases documented by AMC, the patients were spending an average of nine hours per day using the Internet. The issue of "Internet addiction" is also being considered by American psychiatrists. The article notes a lively ongoing discussion as to whether "Internet addiction" should be included as a disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-V) planned for release in 2012. Tao indicates that female patients are most often hooked on chat rooms, while male patients are addicted to online games. He notes that when the patients are involuntarily admitted for treatment, almost all of them suffer serious withdrawal symptoms, including anger, irritation and restlessness. AMC considers family therapy to be a central part of the treatment, although other treatments include "behavioral training, drug therapy for patients with mental symptoms, dancing and sports, reading, karaoke and elements of the 12 step program of Alcoholics Anonymous." AMC is also suggesting a cause for Internet addiction:

Patients tend to have parents who are strict authoritarians or demand perfection, or come from single-parent households or homes in which the parents are frequently fighting.

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This much I know: AC Grayling

Today I share a few pearls from philosopher AC Grayling, writing for The Guardian. A human lifespan is less than a thousand months long. You need to make some time to think how to live it. The democracy of blogging and tweeting is absolutely terrific in one way. It is also the most effective producer of rubbish and insult and falsehood we have yet invented. When I was 14 a chaplain at school gave me a reading list. I read everything and I went back to him with a question: how can you really believe in this stuff? Christian churches and Muslim groups have no more right to have their say than women's institutes or trades unions. The government has actively encouraged faith-based education, and therefore given a megaphone to religious voices and fundamentalists. Science is the outcome of being prepared to live without certainty and therefore a mark of maturity. It embraces doubt and loose ends. I'm not sure it is possible to think too much. You don't refresh your mind by partying in Ibiza. That single sentence: "science is the outcome of being prepared to live without certainty..." says more about my own views than an entire caffeine-fueled screed ever could. It's said that brevity is the soul of wit; those nine words illustrate that it can also be the soul of wisdom. Certainty seems to be the single most important thing that separates the devout believer from the atheist, the agnostic, the deist & the doubter. It's fine to say "my god, and my way of worshipping my god, will see me rewarded in the afterlife." I have no issue with that claim on the surface. But you can't be certain of it - certainly not certain enough to damn or pity people who disagree with you or dare to shine lights on the holes in your story. I can't be certain my direct ancestors had opposable big toes and could manufacture their own vitamin C or that our universe is thirteen billion years old, but that's the direction in which the evidence points - convincingly, with a giant pointy finger. No, I'm not certain at all, but that's where I'm putting my money. The holes in those converging storylines are not nearly as glaring as those present in the many, certain alternatives - and they're getting smaller all the time. All those from the "certainist" camp can do is rationalise (ironically enough) the size, shape and positioning of their holes - or look at their stories from such an angle that the holes aren't visible. Well, I prefer a story that makes sense no matter how you look at it.

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