Harvard Study of Human Development, 2003 Questionnaire
Q: “What is the secret to aging well?”
A: “Happiness, caring. Watch what you’re eating. Try to get out and do a little walking or exercise. Have friends. It’s so good to have friends.” —Harriet Vaughn, Study participant, age 80
1: What does it feel like when we love someone? Or when we know someone loves us?
“Think about how you experience it in your body, the sensation of warmth and comfort,” suggest Robert Waldinger and Marc Schulz in their book The Good Life: Lessons from the World’s Longest Scientific Study of Happiness.
Next, think about a similar but different feeling when we help a friend through a difficult time.
“Or the lasting exhilaration when someone we respect says they are proud of us. Think about what it feels like to be moved to tears. Or when you get a small boost of energy sharing a laugh with a coworker. Consider the physical pain of losing someone dear to you,” Bob and Marc write. “Or even the momentary pleasure of waving at the mail carrier.”
2: All of these feelings are based on biology.
“Just as our brain responds to the presence of food in our bellies by rewarding us with pleasure sensations,” the authors note, “so does it respond to positive contact with others. The brain effectively says to us: Yes, more of this, please.
“Positive interaction tells our bodies that we are safe, reducing out physical arousal and increasing our sense of well-being.”
Negative experiences and situations produce a different biological response that generates stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol.
“These hormones.” they write, “are part of a cascade of physical reactions that raise alertness and help us respond to situations of critical importance—the ‘fight or flight’ response. They are a big part of what gives us that feeling of stress.”
These stress hormones and pleasing feelings help us navigate life’s trials and possibilities.
Our goal? Minimize danger. Maximize connection.
3: “These reactions to rewarding and threatening situations have a long evolutionary history,” Bob and Marc write.
“Homo sapiens have been walking around the planet for hundreds of thousands of years with these biological guides to living built inside of us. That little ping of joy you get when a baby laughs at your silly expression is biologically linked to the one your distant ancestors got when they made a baby laugh in the year 100,000 BC.”
Life during Prehistoric times was dangerous for our ancestors.
“They had similar bodies,” the authors note, “but primitive technology gave them only minimal protection from the environment and predatory animals, and virtually no remedies for injury or other health problems. A toothache could end in death. They lived short, hard, and probably terrifying lives.
“And yet they survived,” they surmise. “Why?”
One reason? “Their bodies and brains had evolved to encourage cooperation,” Bob and Marc write. “They survived because they were social.”
We are built the same way. “The human animal,” they suggest, “has evolved to be connected with other humans.”
Human connection and relationships are not a “touchy-feely idea,” the authors observe. “It is a hard fact. Scientific studies have told us again and again: human beings need nutrition, we need exercise, we need purpose, and we need each other.”
As the Director and Assistant Director of the longest in-depth longitudinal study of human life ever done, Bob and Marc are routinely asked to summarize the findings of the Harvard Study.
“People want to know: What is the most important thing we’ve learned?” they note.
“Both of us are by nature resistant to simple answers, so these conversations are often not as short as the questioners might like. But when we really think about the consistent signal that comes through after eighty-four years of study and hundreds of research papers, it is that one simple message:
“Positive relationships are essential to human well-being.”
More tomorrow.
________________________
Reflection: Am I surprised by the findings of the Harvard study? How might I apply the key lesson around the importance of relationships?
Action: Discuss with a family member or friend.
What did you think of this post?
