What keeps us healthy and happy as we go through life? If you were going to invest now in your future best self, where would you put your timeand your energy?
There was a recent survey of millennials asking them what theirmost important life goals were, and over 80 percent said that a major life goal for themwas to get rich. And another 50 percentof those same young adults said that another major life goal was to become famous. (Laughter) And we're constantly toldto lean in to work, to push harder and achieve more. We're given the impression that theseare the things that we need to go after in order to have a good life.
Pictures of entire lives, of the choices that people makeand how those choices work out for them, those picturesare almost impossible to get. Most of what we know about human life we know from asking peopleto remember the past, and as we know, hindsightis anything but 20/20. We forget vast amountsof what happens to us in life, and sometimes memoryis downright creative. But what if we could watch entire lives as they unfold through time, What if we could study peoplefrom the time that they were teenagers all the way into old age to see what really keeps peoplehappy and healthy?
We did that. The Harvard Study of Adult Development may be the longest studyof adult life that's ever been done. For 75 years, we've trackedthe lives of 724 men, year after year, asking about their work,their home lives, their health, and of course asking all along the waywithout knowing how their life stories were going to turn out.
Studies like this are exceedingly rare. Almost all projects of this kindfall apart within a decade because too many peopledrop out of the study, or funding for the research dries up, or the researchers get distracted, or they die, and nobody moves the ballfurther down the field. But through a combination of luck and the persistenceof several generations of researchers, this study has survived. About 60 of our original 724 men are still alive, still participating in the study, most of them in their 90s. And we are now beginning to study the more than 2,000 children of these men. And I'm the fourth director of the study.
Since 1938, we've tracked the livesof two groups of men. The first group started in the study when they were sophomoresat Harvard College. They all finished collegeduring World War II, and then most went offto serve in the war. And the second group that we've followed was a group of boysfrom Boston's poorest neighborhoods, boys who were chosen for the study specifically because they werefrom some of the most troubled and disadvantaged families in the Boston of the 1930s. Most lived in tenements,many without hot and cold running water. When they entered the study, all of these teenagers were interviewed. They were given medical exams. We went to their homesand we interviewed their parents. And then these teenagersgrew up into adults who entered all walks of life. They became factory workers and lawyersand bricklayers and doctors, one President of the United States. Some developed alcoholism.
A few developed schizophrenia. Some climbed the social ladder from the bottomall the way to the very top, and some made that journeyin the opposite direction. The founders of this study would never in their wildest dreams have imagined that I would bestanding here today, 75 years later, telling you thatthe study still continues. Every two years, our patientand dedicated research staff calls up our menand asks them if we can send them yet one more set of questionsabout their lives.
Many of the inner city Boston men ask us, "Why do you keep wanting to study me?My life just isn't that interesting." The Harvard men never ask that question. (Laughter) To get the clearest pictureof these lives, we don't just send them questionnaires. We interview them in their living rooms. We get their medical recordsfrom their doctors. We draw their blood, we scan their brains, we talk to their children. We videotape them talking with their wivesabout their deepest concerns. And when, about a decade ago,we finally asked the wives if they would join usas members of the study, many of the women said,"You know, it's about time." (Laughter) So what have we learned? What are the lessons that comefrom the tens of thousands of pages of information that we've generated on these lives? Well, the lessons aren't about wealthor fame or working harder and harder.
The clearest message that we getfrom this 75-year study is this: Good relationships keep ushappier and healthier. Period. We've learned three big lessonsabout relationships. The first is that social connectionsare really good for us, and that loneliness kills. It turns out that peoplewho are more socially connected to family, to friends, to community, are happier, they're physically healthier,and they live longer than people who are less well connected. And the experience of lonelinessturns out to be toxic.
People who are more isolatedthan they want to be from others find that they are less happy, their health declines earlier in midlife, their brain functioning declines sooner and they live shorter livesthan people who are not lonely. And the sad factis that at any given time, more than one in five Americanswill report that they're lonely. And we know that youcan be lonely in a crowd and you can be lonely in a marriage, so the second big lesson that we learned is that it's not justthe number of friends you have, and it's not whether or notyou're in a committed relationship, but it's the qualityof your close relationships that matters. It turns out that living in the midstof conflict is really bad for our health.
High-conflict marriages, for example,without much affection, turn out to be very bad for our health,perhaps worse than getting divorced. And living in the midst of good,warm relationships is protective. Once we had followed our menall the way into their 80s, we wanted to look back at them at midlife and to see if we could predict who was going to growinto a happy, healthy octogenarian and who wasn't. And when we gathered togethereverything we knew about them at age 50, it wasn't their middle agecholesterol levels that predicted how theywere going to grow old. It was how satisfied they werein their relationships.
The people who were the most satisfiedin their relationships at age 50 were the healthiest at age 80. And good, close relationshipsseem to buffer us from some of the slings and arrowsof getting old. Our most happily partnered men and women reported, in their 80s, that on the dayswhen they had more physical pain, their mood stayed just as happy. But the people who werein unhappy relationships, on the days when theyreported more physical pain, it was magnified by more emotional pain.
And the third big lesson that we learnedabout relationships and our health is that good relationshipsdon't just protect our bodies, they protect our brains. It turns out that beingin a securely attached relationship to another person in your 80sis protective, that the people who are in relationships where they really feel they can counton the other person in times of need, those people's memoriesstay sharper longer. And the people in relationships where they feel they reallycan't count on the other one, those are the people who experienceearlier memory decline. And those good relationships,they don't have to be smooth all the time. Some of our octogenarian couplescould bicker with each other day in and day out, but as long as they felt that theycould really count on the other when the going got tough, those arguments didn't take a tollon their memories. So this message, that good, close relationshipsare good for our health and well-being, this is wisdom that's as old as the hills.
Why is this so hard to getand so easy to ignore?
Well, we're human. What we'd really like is a quick fix, something we can get that'll make our lives goodand keep them that way. Relationships are messyand they're complicated and the hard work of tendingto family and friends, it's not sexy or glamorous. It's also lifelong. It never ends. The people in our 75-year studywho were the happiest in retirement were the people who had actively workedto replace workmates with new playmates.
Just like the millennialsin that recent survey, many of our men when theywere starting out as young adults really believed that fame and wealthand high achievement were what they needed to go afterto have a good life. But over and over, over these 75 years,our study has shown that the people who fared the best werethe people who leaned in to relationships, with family, with friends, with community. So what about you? Let's say you're 25,or you're 40, or you're 60.
What might leaning into relationships even look like?
Well, the possibilitiesare practically endless. It might be something as simpleas replacing screen time with people time or livening up a stale relationshipby doing something new together, long walks or date nights, or reaching out to that family memberwho you haven't spoken to in years, because those all-too-common family feuds take a terrible toll on the people who hold the grudges. I'd like to close with a quotefrom Mark Twain.
More than a century ago, he was looking back on his life, and he wrote this: "There isn't time, so brief is life, for bickerings, apologies,heartburnings, callings to account. There is only time for loving, and but an instant,so to speak, for that." The good life is builtwith good relationships.
There was a recent survey of millennials asking them what theirmost important life goals were, and over 80 percent said that a major life goal for themwas to get rich. And another 50 percentof those same young adults said that another major life goal was to become famous. (Laughter) And we're constantly toldto lean in to work, to push harder and achieve more. We're given the impression that theseare the things that we need to go after in order to have a good life.
Pictures of entire lives, of the choices that people makeand how those choices work out for them, those picturesare almost impossible to get. Most of what we know about human life we know from asking peopleto remember the past, and as we know, hindsightis anything but 20/20. We forget vast amountsof what happens to us in life, and sometimes memoryis downright creative. But what if we could watch entire lives as they unfold through time, What if we could study peoplefrom the time that they were teenagers all the way into old age to see what really keeps peoplehappy and healthy?
We did that. The Harvard Study of Adult Development may be the longest studyof adult life that's ever been done. For 75 years, we've trackedthe lives of 724 men, year after year, asking about their work,their home lives, their health, and of course asking all along the waywithout knowing how their life stories were going to turn out.
Studies like this are exceedingly rare. Almost all projects of this kindfall apart within a decade because too many peopledrop out of the study, or funding for the research dries up, or the researchers get distracted, or they die, and nobody moves the ballfurther down the field. But through a combination of luck and the persistenceof several generations of researchers, this study has survived. About 60 of our original 724 men are still alive, still participating in the study, most of them in their 90s. And we are now beginning to study the more than 2,000 children of these men. And I'm the fourth director of the study.
Since 1938, we've tracked the livesof two groups of men. The first group started in the study when they were sophomoresat Harvard College. They all finished collegeduring World War II, and then most went offto serve in the war. And the second group that we've followed was a group of boysfrom Boston's poorest neighborhoods, boys who were chosen for the study specifically because they werefrom some of the most troubled and disadvantaged families in the Boston of the 1930s. Most lived in tenements,many without hot and cold running water. When they entered the study, all of these teenagers were interviewed. They were given medical exams. We went to their homesand we interviewed their parents. And then these teenagersgrew up into adults who entered all walks of life. They became factory workers and lawyersand bricklayers and doctors, one President of the United States. Some developed alcoholism.
A few developed schizophrenia. Some climbed the social ladder from the bottomall the way to the very top, and some made that journeyin the opposite direction. The founders of this study would never in their wildest dreams have imagined that I would bestanding here today, 75 years later, telling you thatthe study still continues. Every two years, our patientand dedicated research staff calls up our menand asks them if we can send them yet one more set of questionsabout their lives.
Many of the inner city Boston men ask us, "Why do you keep wanting to study me?My life just isn't that interesting." The Harvard men never ask that question. (Laughter) To get the clearest pictureof these lives, we don't just send them questionnaires. We interview them in their living rooms. We get their medical recordsfrom their doctors. We draw their blood, we scan their brains, we talk to their children. We videotape them talking with their wivesabout their deepest concerns. And when, about a decade ago,we finally asked the wives if they would join usas members of the study, many of the women said,"You know, it's about time." (Laughter) So what have we learned? What are the lessons that comefrom the tens of thousands of pages of information that we've generated on these lives? Well, the lessons aren't about wealthor fame or working harder and harder.
The clearest message that we getfrom this 75-year study is this: Good relationships keep ushappier and healthier. Period. We've learned three big lessonsabout relationships. The first is that social connectionsare really good for us, and that loneliness kills. It turns out that peoplewho are more socially connected to family, to friends, to community, are happier, they're physically healthier,and they live longer than people who are less well connected. And the experience of lonelinessturns out to be toxic.
People who are more isolatedthan they want to be from others find that they are less happy, their health declines earlier in midlife, their brain functioning declines sooner and they live shorter livesthan people who are not lonely. And the sad factis that at any given time, more than one in five Americanswill report that they're lonely. And we know that youcan be lonely in a crowd and you can be lonely in a marriage, so the second big lesson that we learned is that it's not justthe number of friends you have, and it's not whether or notyou're in a committed relationship, but it's the qualityof your close relationships that matters. It turns out that living in the midstof conflict is really bad for our health.
High-conflict marriages, for example,without much affection, turn out to be very bad for our health,perhaps worse than getting divorced. And living in the midst of good,warm relationships is protective. Once we had followed our menall the way into their 80s, we wanted to look back at them at midlife and to see if we could predict who was going to growinto a happy, healthy octogenarian and who wasn't. And when we gathered togethereverything we knew about them at age 50, it wasn't their middle agecholesterol levels that predicted how theywere going to grow old. It was how satisfied they werein their relationships.
The people who were the most satisfiedin their relationships at age 50 were the healthiest at age 80. And good, close relationshipsseem to buffer us from some of the slings and arrowsof getting old. Our most happily partnered men and women reported, in their 80s, that on the dayswhen they had more physical pain, their mood stayed just as happy. But the people who werein unhappy relationships, on the days when theyreported more physical pain, it was magnified by more emotional pain.
And the third big lesson that we learnedabout relationships and our health is that good relationshipsdon't just protect our bodies, they protect our brains. It turns out that beingin a securely attached relationship to another person in your 80sis protective, that the people who are in relationships where they really feel they can counton the other person in times of need, those people's memoriesstay sharper longer. And the people in relationships where they feel they reallycan't count on the other one, those are the people who experienceearlier memory decline. And those good relationships,they don't have to be smooth all the time. Some of our octogenarian couplescould bicker with each other day in and day out, but as long as they felt that theycould really count on the other when the going got tough, those arguments didn't take a tollon their memories. So this message, that good, close relationshipsare good for our health and well-being, this is wisdom that's as old as the hills.
Why is this so hard to getand so easy to ignore?
Well, we're human. What we'd really like is a quick fix, something we can get that'll make our lives goodand keep them that way. Relationships are messyand they're complicated and the hard work of tendingto family and friends, it's not sexy or glamorous. It's also lifelong. It never ends. The people in our 75-year studywho were the happiest in retirement were the people who had actively workedto replace workmates with new playmates.
Just like the millennialsin that recent survey, many of our men when theywere starting out as young adults really believed that fame and wealthand high achievement were what they needed to go afterto have a good life. But over and over, over these 75 years,our study has shown that the people who fared the best werethe people who leaned in to relationships, with family, with friends, with community. So what about you? Let's say you're 25,or you're 40, or you're 60.
What might leaning into relationships even look like?
Well, the possibilitiesare practically endless. It might be something as simpleas replacing screen time with people time or livening up a stale relationshipby doing something new together, long walks or date nights, or reaching out to that family memberwho you haven't spoken to in years, because those all-too-common family feuds take a terrible toll on the people who hold the grudges. I'd like to close with a quotefrom Mark Twain.
More than a century ago, he was looking back on his life, and he wrote this: "There isn't time, so brief is life, for bickerings, apologies,heartburnings, callings to account. There is only time for loving, and but an instant,so to speak, for that." The good life is builtwith good relationships.
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