1: The Harvard Study of Adult Development is the longest in-depth longitudinal study of human life ever done. The study has followed the lives of 724 individuals beginning when they were teenagers, and now spans over three generations and includes an additional 1,300 of their descendants.
“For eighty-four years (and counting), the Harvard Study has tracked the same individuals, asking thousands of questions and taking hundreds of measurements to find out what really keeps people healthy and happy,” write Robert Waldinger and Marc Schulz, the current Director and Associate Director of the Study, in their book The Good Life.
“Prospective, life-spanning studies like this are exceedingly rare,” the authors write. ” Participants drop out, change their names, or move without notifying the study. Funding dries up, researchers lose interest. On average, most successful prospective longitudinal studies maintain 30 to 70 percent of their participants. Some of these studies only last several years.
Yet, “by hook and by crook the Harvard Study has maintained an 84 percent participation rate for 84 years, and it’s still in good health today.”
2: So, how does the Harvard Study work?
“Every two years we send lengthy questionnaires that include room for open-ended and personalized responses,” Bob and Marc write.
“Every five years, we collect complete health records from their doctors, and every fifteen years or so, we meet them face-to-face on, say, a porch in Florida or in a coffee shop in northern Wisconsin.
“We take notes on how they look and behave, their level of eye contact, their clothes, and their living conditions.”
The researchers gather information on their weight, how much they exercise, habits around smoking and drinking, their cholesterol, surgeries, and any health complications.
“We have blood samples, DNA samples, and reams of EKG, fMRI, EEG, and other brain imaging reports. We even have twenty-five actual brains, donated by participants in a final act of generosity.”
They also record information about their professional lives, how many close friends they have, as well as their hobbies and recreational interests.
“At a deeper level we design questions to probe their subjective experience and the less quantifiable aspects of their lives,” Bob and Marc explain.
“We ask about job satisfaction, marital satisfaction, methods of resolving conflicts, the psychological impact of marriages and divorces, childbirths and deaths. We ask about their warmest memories of their mothers and fathers, their emotional bonds (or lack thereof) with siblings. We ask them to describe for us in detail the lowest moments of their lives, and to tell us who, if anyone, they could call if they woke up frightened in the middle of the night.”
And that’s not all.
“We study their spiritual beliefs and political preferences,” they write, “their church attendance and participation in community activities, their goals in life and their sources of worries. Many of our participants went to war, fought and killed and saw their friends killed; we have their firsthand accounts and reflections on these experiences.”
The Harvard Study knows which participants developed alcoholism and who went to recovery. “We know who voted for Reagan, who voted for Nixon, who voted for John Kennedy. In fact, before his records were acquired by the Kennedy Library, we knew who Kennedy voted for because he was one of our participants.”
The researchers kept records of how the participants’ children were doing. “Now we are asking the children themselves—women and men who are baby boomers—and one day we hope to ask their children’s children.”
3: What is the #1 finding from the eight-decade study?
“It is the quality of your relationships that matters,” Bob and Marc write. “Simply put, living in the midst of warm relationships is protective of both mind and body. . .
“In fact, good relationships are significant enough that if we had to take all eighty-four years of the Harvard Study and boil it down to a single principle for living, one life investment that is supported by similar findings across a wide variety of other studies, it would be this: Good relationships keep us healthier and happier. Period.”
The really good news?
“It is never too late,” Bob and Marc write.
More tomorrow.
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Reflection: How might our lives change if we truly embraced the Harvard Study’s findings and prioritized nurturing deep, meaningful relationships over individual achievements or material success?
Action: Set aside time each week for intentional connection with loved ones, whether through a phone call, shared activity, or thoughtful conversation, focusing on active listening and genuine engagement to strengthen these vital bonds.
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