
A 75-Year Harvard Study Finds What It Takes To Live A Happy Life - awwstn
http://www.businessinsider.com/grant-study-reveals-what-makes-us-happy-2013-4
======
zalzane
I hate it when these things pop up because they turn problems into self-
fulling prophecies.

I hate being around my mother. I've never had a relationship with a girl in my
entire life. I drown my sorrows into a mug of beer every friday. I barely get
by as is - and have to work my ass off harder than everyone around me to get
anything done.

And now I come across this article that says it's likely I'll make 6 figs less
than some other guy because of these variables that are hopelessly outside of
my control. How fucking depressing.

~~~
Tichy
Sorry, but it's rather funny that what you deem depressing is not making 6
figs rather than being a lonely alcoholic. Maybe some pondering about
happiness would do you some good?

~~~
virmundi
Besides, honestly everything is futile anyway. So you can go play Frisbee golf
with a group of friends, or stay at home in the dark drunk. At the end of the
next century it doesn't matter, you'll both be dead. Happiness is fleeting and
an illusion when seen. Get use to it.

~~~
calinet6
That's just a lie. Ah, the beautiful false equivalence... you will be nothing
in 100 years, but you're something now. You can choose to be nothing now as
well if you want, except that you're not, because you're something while
you're here.

You've been given about a half-century on this planet; you're one of the
luckiest groups of atoms in the entire universe to have agglomerated into a
self-replicating sentient body that is on the brink of _voluntarily_ expanding
into a next level of its evolution at a more and more rapid pace.

At the end of the next century, the human race will probably be, as a whole,
more aware and more advanced than ever before. And you, of all the
agglomerations of atoms in the universe, get to be a part of it. You get to
contribute; you get to be a cell in this incredible human race. And even
better, you get to exist at a time when all the humans on earth are connecting
to each other and spreading information and knowledge faster and better than
ever before. We're becoming a human organism, we're cells in a great life-
form, neurons in a giant brain; we're going to evolve as a planet now, faster
than biology could ever dream.

Happiness is love, and love is the glue that binds us together like neurons,
each knowing if only instinctively how important the others are to the great
network we're in. You can isolate yourself and think that you don't matter and
everything is futile, but if you do that, then and only then will everything
actually be futile. Otherwise, you are very real, the time you have is real,
your life is real, what you choose to do with it is real, and the results
will—in some small or maybe big way—evolve the human race.

To me, that matters.

------
tokenadult
This kind of correlational study is awash in survivorship bias, and may not
even apply to age cohorts born in a different society in a different era. Most
likely, the study results neither show what is sufficient for a happy life for
all nor what is necessary for a happy life for anyone. It would take an
experimental study design with a study population more representative of the
broad range of present-day people (not just Harvard men) to find information
like that.

<http://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/43616/1/626014360.pdf>

AFTER EDIT:

A second-level comment below asks:

 _Weren't women allowed in Harvard in 1938?_

No. Women have been able to attend Radcliffe College (very near to Harvard)
throughout my lifetime and even before, but women being admitted as
undergraduate students to Harvard only happened in the 1970s.

[http://www.college.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k61161&...](http://www.college.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k61161&tabgroupid=icb.tabgroup85886)

(In other words, the girl I know from high school in Minnesota who attended
Harvard was one of the very first to do so.)

~~~
fragsworth
Agreed; this study seems to only find correlations between parenting and
happiness/success in life.

What if some children grow up in certain ways regardless of how they're
raised, and this is what causes them to have shitty relationships with their
parents? Maybe some kids don't get good parenting simply because they became
little shits? And then this carried on into their lives?

~~~
LekkoscPiwa
> became little shits

no child just becomes a "little shit". It takes a lot of time and effort to
create one.

Children have some certain negative aspects in them and have some positive
aspects in them. Parenting is all about making good aspects stronger and
negative aspects weaker.

Recently, my child started yelling like crazy. She will just start screaming
at a restaurant thinking it's fun (3 year old). Or just yell at 3 am. I could
yell back and make this negative aspect stronger, instead I enrolled her to
the music classes to channel all this yelling energy into something good.
Guess what, she yells less.

It's all about the parents.

~~~
calinet6
It really is.

There are people who believe people are predestined and struck in stone, and
that there are good people and bad people, and that if someone is bad or lazy
or has bad characteristics there's nothing that can be done, it's just who
they are.

Those people are wrong and make horrible parents.

~~~
fragsworth
The world isn't black and white. We're born with predispositions. Upbringing
has some influence. But consider that all the parenting in the world can't
make a retarded kid smart. How do you know there aren't other things in our
brains that are difficult or can't be controlled?

~~~
calinet6
I absolutely agree, I think there definitely are.

I'm not saying there are only 2 kinds of people, but that there's sort of a
divide. This divide appears to be nearly dichotomous, and it seems to follow
some pretty fundamental beliefs about humanity and our place in the world.
It's no doubt a stochastic process leading to such a divide, and it's no doubt
continuous, but there's a line where if you're on one side, you sort of think
it's okay to use some negative reinforcement with people and that they need
that to grow stronger (a self-reinforcing idea), and if you're on the other
side you sort of think it's not really okay to punish (also a self-reinforcing
idea), and the self-reinforcing nature of those ideas leads to their internal
reinforcement to become stronger, such that we really do get clustering of
individuals who all hold this strong belief about people, and reinforce each
other.

There are very few people in the middle of this, and while the child and the
personality is not a dichotomy per se, the belief about punishment vs. reward;
negative vs. positive reinforcement—is quite dichotomous, not because the
world is black and white, but because of the effect of internal reinforcement,
groupthink, and time. People gravitate to one side or the other, and having a
middle way on these sorts of issues is not attractive to the human psyche or,
as it turns out, the way ideas naturally propagate and grow within people.

Politics works precisely the same way, and indeed shares many of the roots of
this very opinion on humanity: does punishment work better, or does reward
work better? Do we leave the poor to fend for themselves, or do we proactively
help them due to their circumstances? It comes down to the way people believe
humans work, and again, these ideas gravitate naturally toward opposite ends.

It's quite sad, because reality really is somewhere in the middle, and an
effective strategy would take into account the reality of human behavior in
addition to the side effects of negative reinforcement and the benefits of
positive reinforcement and result in a well-balanced type of policy or
parenting style that's scientifically sound and based on truth. But that's not
how we work with our offspring; we do what we believe is right and try to do
better than our parents, and maybe if we read here or there that this or that
is good for the kid, we'll take it into consideration. I truly believe most
parents are trying to do what's best for their child, if they can, and it's
ignorance and false beliefs about people in general that leads them to make
mistakes. I think that's the gist of it.

So you're right, the world isn't black and white, I appreciate you opening my
eyes to the truth of the middle way and the truth behind the incomprehensible
layers of complexity. It's just fascinating to me how people form ideas, and
especially how dichotomous ideas take hold and self-reinforce, because I
really think they do. I think it's one of the great problems we could solve in
society in the next few dozen years with great benefit, but there's probably
not anyone with the right mindset to study it correctly.

~~~
LekkoscPiwa
Very interesting post. I definitely agree with you.

There are two additional points I'd like to make.

1\. >does punishment work better, or does reward work better?

There are always two "variables" when dealing with a situation: a) person
you're dealing with b) situation you're dealing with For situation A that
involves Henry, you know that punhishment works better. For situation A that
involves Jonathan you will know that reward works better. For situation B it
might be just opposite for the given persons. So, you just adjust to get
results. It's _not_ like you are in the punishing camp and won't reward in
another situation involving the same person or different one. It's all about
results sometimes. You want to get your stuff done or your kid do what you
want, right? Not just to punish or reward. That would be really hollow
personality type. At least in my book.

2\. >It's just fascinating to me how people form ideas, and especially how
dichotomous ideas take hold and self-reinforce, because I really think they
do. I think it's one of the great problems we could solve in society in the
next few dozen years with great benefit, but there's probably not anyone with
the right mindset to study it correctly.

Well, this problem has been "solved" by politicians who are currently running
show in the West. Ever heard of the term technocrat when talking about
politicians? Left more efficient with the social issues? Let's have left
there. Right more efficient with the economy? Let's do what right advocates
there. What you described is what technocrat politicians believe in and do.
And is the reason why our societies and economies are so messed up ;-)

------
singular
Ack. Reliable or not, I'm sure it was meant as a feel-good piece, but for
people like me the quote:-

"Vaillant’s key takeaway, in his own words: “The seventy-five years and twenty
million dollars expended on the Grant Study points … to a straightforward
five-word conclusion: ‘Happiness is love. Full stop.’"

Is actually very depressing. I am 5'5" so have this (if you've not encountered
it you are unlikely to be aware) INSANE disadvantage when it comes to dating -
women can't stand short men. Seems almost certain to be a genetic thing.

Basically, I've given up. There are major issues in the family too, so I am
half-estranged from many close members of the family.

So yeah, hopefully it's just _false_ feel-good fluff.

~~~
scarmig
I'm 5'4", chubby, prematurely balding, and under 30, and I've been in long
term relationships with several awesome women.

There are certainly disadvantages to being short, probably especially in the
dating realm. Big whoop. That's not what's preventing you from dating anyone.

~~~
singular
I never said _preventing_. It's a massive disadvantage. I could (+ might)
write a longer piece about the whole subject as there is more to this than
height but it's quite surprising what a difference it makes.

If you can overcome that disadvantage, all power to you, but it doesn't change
the state of affairs.

I refer you to this graph -
<http://cdn.okcimg.com/blog/lies/MessagesPerWeek.png>

It's a rough analysis but shows a clear female preference based on height.
Certainly an indicator.

------
j2kun
Doesn't "Harvard undergraduate" give a significant bias to the whole study?
I'm not disagreeing with their claims, but claiming universality doesn't seem
appropriate.

~~~
jonahx
Cool study, but this is obligatory:

    
    
        Roger Meyers, head of Itchy&Scratchy studios: Allright, 
        heads up you bunch of low- lifes.  This is Abraham Simpson, 
        and from now on you guys are going to take all of your cues 
        from him.  He's got something you couldn't get at your
        expensive, ivy-league schools: life experience.
    
        One of the post-college kids: Actually, I wrote my 
        thesis on life experience.

------
jheimark
Strong relationships make you happy. Not that suprising - we are social
creatures after all.

Those interested in learning more should read the original Grant study
synopsis in the Atlantic
[http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/06/what-
mak...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/06/what-makes-us-
happy/307439/)

~~~
evangineer
HN discussion of the Atlantic's Grant Study synopsis:

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=605207>

------
narrator
The big takeaway seems to be that as long as you don't become an alcoholic and
are able to adequately maintain relationships you'll probably be ok.

------
hzay
The title really has to be changed to "A 75-Year Harvard Study on Men Finds
What It Takes To Live A Happy Life". I clicked and was disappointed.

~~~
ricardobeat
I wonder why limit the study to men. Weren't women allowed in Harvard in 1938?

~~~
kps
No, actually, they went to Radcliffe. Harvard did not admit women to
undergraduate programs until 1973.

------
MarkMc
Paul Tough's book, "How Children Succeed" [1] has a great section on how
mothering style has a large effect on offspring throughout their lives:

"Parents and other caregivers who are able to form close, nurturing
relationships with their children can foster resilience in them that protects
them from many of the worst effects of a harsh early environment. This message
can sound a bit warm and fuzzy, but it is rooted in cold, hard science. The
effect of good parenting is not just emotional or psychological, the
neuroscientists say; it is biochemical.

The researcher who has done the most to expand our understanding of the
relationship between parenting and stress is a neuroscientist at McGill
University named Michael Meaney. Like many in the field, Meaney does much of
his research with rats, as rats and humans have similar brain architecture. At
any given time, the Meaney lab houses hundreds of rats. They live in Plexiglas
cages, and usually each cage holds a mother rat, called a dam, and her small
brood of baby rats, called pups.

Scientists in rat labs are always picking up baby rats to examine them or
weigh them, and one day about ten years ago, researchers in Meaney’s lab
noticed a curious thing: When they put the pups back in the cages after
handling them, some dams would scurry over and spend a few minutes licking and
grooming their pups. Others would just ignore them. When the researchers
examined the rat pups, they discovered that this seemingly insignificant
practice had a distinct physiological effect. When a lab assistant handled a
rat pup, researchers found, it produced anxiety, a flood of stress hormones,
in the pup. The dam’s licking and grooming counteracted that anxiety and
calmed down that surge of hormones.

Meaney and his researchers were intrigued, and they wanted to learn more about
how licking and grooming worked and what kind of effect it had on the pups. So
they kept watching the rats, spending long days and nights with their faces
pressed up against the Plexiglas, and after many weeks of careful observation,
they made an additional discovery: different mother rats had different
patterns of licking and grooming, even in the absence of their pups' being
handled. So Meaney’s team undertook a new experiment, with a new set of dams,
to try to quantify these patterns. This time, they didn’t handle any of the
pups. They just closely observed each cage, an hour at a time, eight sessions
a day, for the first ten days of the pups' lives. Researchers counted every
instance of maternal licking and grooming. And after ten days, they divided
the dams into two categories: the ones that licked and groomed a lot, which
they labeled high LG, and the ones that licked and groomed a little, which
they labeled low LG.

...

The researchers ran test after test, and on each one, the high-LG offspring
excelled: They were better at mazes. They were more social. They were more
curious. They were less aggressive. They had more self-control. They were
healthier. They lived longer. Meaney and his researchers were astounded. What
seemed like a tiny variation in early mothering style, so small that decades
of researchers hadn’t noticed it, created huge behavioral differences in
mature rats, months after the licking and grooming had taken place. And the
effect wasn't just behavioral; it was biological too. When Meaney’s
researchers examined the brains of the adult rats, they found significant
differences in the stress-response systems of the high—LG and low-LG rats,
including big variations in the size and shape and complexity of the parts of
the brain that regulated stress."

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/How-Children-Succeed-Curiosity-
Charact...](http://www.amazon.com/How-Children-Succeed-Curiosity-
Character/dp/1452658145)

~~~
hackerpolicy
What can the child do once he starts to ask himself what the hell is wrong
with him, and little by little, starts to associate some wrongs with his
childhood? Is it possible to revert bad parenting?

~~~
meester
Albert Ellis has already proven the answer to this is "yes". In short, we are
the ones typically responsible for our own neurosis as we maintain flawed
thinking or understandings of reality. People with loving parents have turned
out screwed up kids, just the same.

~~~
calinet6
"People with loving parents have turned out screwed up kids, just the same."

This simply does not matter if there is a statistically valid conclusion
saying the opposite.

There will always be outliers and anecdotes. You should be looking at the
statistical trend, not individual cases.

~~~
meester
I'd say it's valid if science says otherwise

~~~
calinet6
Now you're just being silly.

------
kps
Link is an annoying wrapper around
[http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/05/thanks-m...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/05/thanks-
mom/309287/)

------
huggah
How on earth can we usefully generalize from the experiences of white men born
~1918 who attended Harvard? I think longitudinal studies are massively
important, and I'm all in favor of them, things like:

"Alcoholism was the main cause of divorce between the Grant Study men and
their wives"

Don't really give us that much of a clue about how alcoholism (for instance)
affects everyone else. I suspect it's similar; but this doesn't give us any
data on anyone who isn't in a very very specific group.

------
kleiba
Being a researcher myself, I can only guess the answer must be "long-term
funding"? :)

------
pingou
"For instance, the 58 men who scored highest on measurements of “warm
relationships” earned an average of $141,000 a year more at their peak
salaries (usually between ages 55 and 60) than the 31 men who scored lowest".

Why can't they give an percentage, do these people who scored high earn 40 %
more or just 5 % ?

I'm too lazy too check the average salary of Harvard undergraduate men at age
60.

------
precisioncoder
Science. Correlation != Causation. In other words happy people are more likely
to remember their relationships with others in a positive light. I used to
think I had a bad childhood, I wasn't happy. Then I was happy and would rave
about the wonderful childhood I had. Now I'm kinda in the middle and am
satisfied with my childhood. Your current attitude affects your view of your
own past.

~~~
zaptheimpaler
This is a longitudinal study. They were surveyed every two years.

~~~
precisioncoder
My comment still applies. People with happy lives will see their earlier years
in a warmer light than those without happy lives.

~~~
calinet6
I think the point is that they actually surveyed them every two years, so they
weren't asking them to look back on their lives, they actually had that
information while they were experiencing it.

There may be other biases and errors, but I don't think your argument is valid
given the method.

~~~
precisioncoder
They started surveying them when they were at Harvard from what I understand.
That is still quite a bit removed from their childhoods. In any case the point
about correlation != causation stands. The information is interesting, but I
find that too often with these studies a correlation is taken. A conclusion is
then made on the basis of the correlation, and then the conclusion is stated
as fact. Anecdotal evidence follows and that's the end of it. The thing that
irritates me the most is that it's just taken as truth and rarely if ever do
people investigate further. I'd just love to have a discussion about the data
and the possible implications and other explanations for the same data with
judgement left up to the reader.

~~~
calinet6
I think you'll always get that in the pop psych pieces; they'll always
_always_ try to reach some eye-catching conclusion title to pull people in. I
haven't read the original paper, but I highly doubt they made a case for
causation unless the statistics backed it up; and if the stats did back it up,
then the science does in fact say causation and not just correlation. It would
be interesting to check.

------
vlasev
If you really want to know what it takes to live a happy life, read the book
Flow [1] by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. It's the best book I've ever read on
happiness and reading it has positively changed my life like nothing else.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Flow-Psychology-Experience-Mihaly-
Csik...](http://www.amazon.com/Flow-Psychology-Experience-Mihaly-
Csikszentmihalyi/dp/0061339202)

~~~
drumdance
I love this book and it likewise had a great effect on my life. That said,
it's mostly affected me in career choices. It doesn't have much to say about
relationships.

~~~
vlasev
Actually, it has a lot to say about relationships. If you are unhappy about
yourself, you'll have a tough time being happy with someone else. Therefore,
it is very important to work on yourself first, on your own issues, to improve
your own confidence and self-respect. Only then can you expect to be happy
around other people.

------
JDDunn9
These are the kind of studies that make me think social-psychology is just a
psuedo-science. If you want to understand human-nature, read Shakespeare over
Freud. If you want to influence people, read Dale Carnegie over B.F. Skinner.

I'll gladly eat crow if this study results in a 6% increase in loving
relationships or a 5% decrease in alcoholism...

~~~
jckt
Not actively disagreeing, but would you care to elaborate on why you think
social-psychology is a psuedo-science?

~~~
JDDunn9
In his book ([http://www.amazon.com/Statistical-Models-Causal-Inference-
Di...](http://www.amazon.com/Statistical-Models-Causal-Inference-
Dialogue/dp/0521123909/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1368755594&sr=1-5&keywords=causality))
Professor Freedman says one of the reasons the social sciences have had
virtually no beneficial impact on society (as opposed to the incredible
progress in the hard sciences) is that their "studies" have unsupported
mathematics. They make too many assumptions, and their methodologies don't
support their conclusions. For example, you can do a study on the top reasons
teens use drugs, and in a decade those reasons have completely changed because
of the shift in culture.

The social sciences don't work well with the scientific method. You can't
randomly select people, and you can't get them to make long-term changes to
their lifestyle. Without experimental evidence, you are left with
observational data, which is a nightmare to find causation instead of just
correlation.

~~~
auctiontheory
You are conflating multiple issues here: whether social science studies are
valid, whether the effects of social science are beneficial to society,
whether passing some "scientific method test" is a requirement for an approach
to be "good."

To take one example (of many), all of consumer marketing is an outgrowth of
social science - nowadays consumer marketing, behavioral psychology, and
behavioral economics are overlapping fields which happen to go by different
names.

We might debate whether marketing has been "beneficial," but I don't think you
can reasonably argue that all marketing doesn't work just because the math
behind it isn't as rigorous as quantum mechanics. (Not that we completely
understand quantum mechanics.)

~~~
JDDunn9
Consumer marketing would be a good example of something that has no long-term
benefit because society changes too often. Marketing techniques that work in
one decade won't work in the next. Because of this, marketing isn't
cumulative. Our knowledge of the hard sciences is always improving, building
on the work of the previous generations.

Yes, there are legitimate fields that don't have rigorous math behind them,
but the social sciences try to use studies and numbers as the foundation of
their theories. They want to be treated like biology, but their studies are
not up to par.

------
ogdoad
They posed this question to the now over-aged Professor who started this study
as a Bachelor's project.

He replied: "Tenure."

------
ohwp
Related: according to this study in the UK alcohol is the most destructive
drug:
[http://www.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar/~mmiller/espanol/Variedades,%2...](http://www.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar/~mmiller/espanol/Variedades,%20politica/drogas_Journal.pdf)
[PDF]

------
danbmil99
So... High earners scored higher on "warmest relationships". Which is cause,
vs effect here?

------
davidkatz
Here's to another round of correlation/causation errors. Brace yourself.

------
acchow
Linking to Business Insider for science? Seriously? Business insider is just
barely on this side of tabloid.

------
kailuowang
I was often asked "what do you believe then? " after I told people I don't
believe in any religion. My answer is rather simple: I don't need to live on
any belief. I live on knowledge. I know the following for a fact: love makes
me happy, hatred makes me unhappy. And I want to be happy. That's enough.

Now I can say it's not just knowledge, it's science.

~~~
LekkoscPiwa
Science says believing (i.e. religion) makes people's lives happier, longer,
more productive. So, why you don't believe in any religion? Science says it's
good for you. Paradox perhaps?

~~~
kailuowang
I was merely pointing out that now science also prove that love makes you
happy. I didn't say that science says you shouldn't believe in religion. So
what paradox are you talking about?

BTW, I don't know about the science you mentioned, sounds fascinating. Does
that definition of believing also include believing in Nazi, believing in
Communism? Did it include the consequence of all the wars and terrorism driven
religious belief (or any other none scientific "believing")?

~~~
LekkoscPiwa
and I merely pointed out that science doesn't have all the answers. That's why
science found out that to be happy you need to believe in religion.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_and_happiness>

The paradox is that you seem to embrace science but ignore some of its
findings in your personal life. (i.e. you are not religious).

------
ender89
Which has now been completely invalidated by the internet changing how we all
live our lives.

