Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

80-year Harvard study has been showing how to live a healthy and happy life

news.harvard.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 179 posts

Re: 80-year Harvard study has been showing how to live a healthy and happy life

#21

Post by rokhayakebe »

aschearer wrote: post #9

If you like this you may also enjoy "The Village Effect" by Susan Pinker[1]. In the book the author documents various ways in which social connectedness impacts our well being. As this article and book say "loneliness kills", but what does that mean for those of us who want to live long and healthy lives? Do we need to start scheduling social time alongside gym time? Will a hug a day keep the doctor away? Should we j…

Should we join organized religions or get married strictly for the health benefits

Sure, why not? So long as you can use from it what is beneficial and leave the rest. Everyone gets married for some reason (have kids, finances, politics, lust, love etc...). If you do it to be happier and live a longer live, then all the more power. Everyone who choosed their religion did so for some reason (get closer to God, politics, fashion, soul-finding etc...). If you do it to be happier and live a longer live, then all the more power.

Re: 80-year Harvard study has been showing how to live a healthy and happy life

#22

Post by mcguire »

zeteo wrote: post #17

This reads like someone consciously decided "Hey, let's build the ultimate poster boy for bad statistical studies!". 1. Sample bias : "Why just study WEIRD [1] subjects? Let's do male Harvard graduates!" (Yes, half the study included inner city men, and one eighth of the duration featured women. It's still super heavily biased towards Harvard men.) 2. Correlation is not causation : "Hmm, health is correlated with rel…

"Psychiatrist George Vaillant, who joined the team as a researcher in 1966, led the study from 1972 until 2004. Trained as a psychoanalyst, Vaillant emphasized the role of relationships, and came to recognize the crucial role they played in people living long and pleasant lives."

My first thought was that he found what he was looking for.

Re: 80-year Harvard study has been showing how to live a healthy and happy life

#24

Post by PunchTornado »

zeteo wrote: post #17

This reads like someone consciously decided "Hey, let's build the ultimate poster boy for bad statistical studies!". 1. Sample bias : "Why just study WEIRD [1] subjects? Let's do male Harvard graduates!" (Yes, half the study included inner city men, and one eighth of the duration featured women. It's still super heavily biased towards Harvard men.) 2. Correlation is not causation : "Hmm, health is correlated with rel…

I don't see anything wrong with the subjects being predominantly male Harvard graduates.

A healthy and happy life means something different for an African farmer or for an Oxford professor. Obviously this study is concerned about the later. I also imagine that back in the day there were far more male graduates at Harvard.

Re: 80-year Harvard study has been showing how to live a healthy and happy life

#25

Post by PunchTornado »

mcguire wrote: post #22
zeteo wrote: post #17

This reads like someone consciously decided "Hey, let's build the ultimate poster boy for bad statistical studies!". 1. Sample bias : "Why just study WEIRD [1] subjects? Let's do male Harvard graduates!" (Yes, half the study included inner city men, and one eighth of the duration featured women. It's still super heavily biased towards Harvard men.) 2. Correlation is not causation : "Hmm, health is correlated with rel…

" Psychiatrist George Vaillant, who joined the team as a researcher in 1966, led the study from 1972 until 2004. Trained as a psychoanalyst, Vaillant emphasized the role of relationships, and came to recognize the crucial role they played in people living long and pleasant lives. " My first thought was that he found what he was looking for.

I guess that's the danger in social sciences.

Re: 80-year Harvard study has been showing how to live a healthy and happy life

#26

Post by polpenn »

Note that what they reportedly found is a stronger positive correlation between relationships and happiness than between money and fame and happiness (just based on the article):

"Close relationships, more than money or fame, are what keep people happy throughout their lives, the study revealed"

So going after fame and money doesn't necessarily lead you to become unhappy (if we interpret the results as causal). Quality personal relationships just makes you even happier.

Also, I'm curious to what extent cultivating meaningful relationship serves as a coping mechanism for people with little money or social status (alternatively, focusing on making money and acquiring high social status to compensate for poor personal relationship development skills). My impression, based on my observations from people I've met in developing countries, is that low income / social status people tend to have richer and active communities and personal relationships. High status individuals tend to be lonelier. But this could just be confirmation bias.

Re: 80-year Harvard study has been showing how to live a healthy and happy life

#27

Post by polpenn »

zeteo wrote: post #17

This reads like someone consciously decided "Hey, let's build the ultimate poster boy for bad statistical studies!". 1. Sample bias : "Why just study WEIRD [1] subjects? Let's do male Harvard graduates!" (Yes, half the study included inner city men, and one eighth of the duration featured women. It's still super heavily biased towards Harvard men.) 2. Correlation is not causation : "Hmm, health is correlated with rel…

1. is an issue with external validity (i.e. does the findings generalize to other groups). But the comparison being made in the study is within a given group with similar socioeconomic status (all Harvard males). Assuming that they only vary in the quality of their personal relationships, any difference in happiness because of this could, assuming it is causal, be interpreted as a generalizable effect of relationship quality.

Re: 80-year Harvard study has been showing how to live a healthy and happy life

#29

Post by throwawayfeel »

scottLobster wrote: post #5
glbrew wrote: post #2

I don't know the nuances of this study but I am curious about the role of personality. I have lived much of my life with large groups of caring family and friends and I was miserable. I have lived parts of my life as relatively isolated and reclusive and was enormously happy. Have any related studies accounted for personality? 5,10,20% of the population might be the exact opposite?

Seems like you fit the study's findings quite well actually: "The surprising finding is that our relationships and how happy we are in our relationships has a powerful influence on our health." You can be surrounded by "caring" family and friends that you don't have a lot in common with, and that can be miserable. Getting determined but bad/outdated advice from parents is a classic and widespread example. It's not th…

I have an anecdote of this from literally yesterday(and it's personal enough to be a throwaway).

Status from my 20s to early 30s: at home, occasional small gigs, not much steady work or career prospects. I got badgered with "we worry about you" or "maybe you should get a second job" all the time.

Status as of yesterday when I reported that I had successfully speculated several hundred thousand dollars through multi-year cryptocurrency trades: Wow, that's great, you should diversify your wealth and marry someone now. The dinner table conversation was relaxed for once.

Which is still them imposing a narrative on me, but it's one I feel a lot more able to negotiate than the money question, where any plan or project I announced was simply met with further doubt, dismay or disinterest. They didn't want to engage with the prospects or pay attention to anything but results and it was leaving me constantly gloomy and self-doubting and frustrated with them.

And I don't think it's exactly that the money itself is making me happy, since I'm pretty spartan in my lifestyle - I'll go out for coffee drinks most days and that's my biggest and most common indulgence, but I don't spend on big luxuries or travel more than once every year or two. It's the side effect of the story changing to "I'm not totally dependent anymore, I'm free to do what I want right now" and subsequently changing their outlook.

Re: 80-year Harvard study has been showing how to live a healthy and happy life

#30

Post by catawbasam »

rokhayakebe wrote: post #21
aschearer wrote: post #9

If you like this you may also enjoy "The Village Effect" by Susan Pinker[1]. In the book the author documents various ways in which social connectedness impacts our well being. As this article and book say "loneliness kills", but what does that mean for those of us who want to live long and healthy lives? Do we need to start scheduling social time alongside gym time? Will a hug a day keep the doctor away? Should we j…

Should we join organized religions or get married strictly for the health benefits Sure, why not? So long as you can use from it what is beneficial and leave the rest. Everyone gets married for some reason (have kids, finances, politics, lust, love etc...). If you do it to be happier and live a longer live, then all the more power. Everyone who choosed their religion did so for some reason (get closer to God, politic…

No, not strictly for the health benefits. Do them for their own sake, and they can bring you great joy. Do them without attention to their essential meaning, and you will be living falsely. This will not make you happy or healthy.
Post reply on HN