A giant study proves: friendship is the key to happiness and health

A giant study proves: friendship is the key to happiness and health

Science has confirmed it: neither wealth nor fame are not worth a good friend You are rich? You are famous? It will not prevent you from having a rotten health, even as your old classmates who have anonymously pointed at the factory or scraped paper for cheap lifelong displayed an insolent health at the time of retirement sounds . Since them, we love them for real. This is the conclusion that can be drawn from a study led by Professor Robert Waldinger and reported by the Washington Post.

Robert Waldinger, a psychiatrist at Harvard, took over in 2003 the management of the Grant Study. For over seventy years that the US government spends millions for this program the results of which were not known to the public. Waldinger decided to speak at a Ted conference viewed by over 6.5 million people since November 2015.

This study, the longest ever conducted on human development, began in 1938. That year, the researchers selected Harvard students (including future President Kennedy) to examine the long term every aspect of their lives. In the 1970s, the research team began to work with another team that led since 1940 the same kind of study of young men from poor neighborhoods of Boston. All were men, all were white, but their social status was very different.

The study initially had 724 participants. There remains some sixty, all aged over 90 years. For over seventy years, the physical and emotional well-being of these men is assessed every two years. Waldinger refers humorously participants from disadvantaged neighborhoods in Boston regularly ask why researchers are interested in their lives, they feel they have no interest, while former Harvard never ask this question! If the study on the scale of a human life has to draw many conclusions, it appears that one of them is different from all others: the participants of the happiest and healthier groups are those who have maintained over their lives close and intimate relationships with other people, whether friendly relations, romantic or within their community.

Waldinger was reached this conclusion long ago when he became the fourth director of the study in 2003. Its first step was then to convene the wives of participants still alive and to study the impact of their married life their health to them. Conclusion: the happiest married were happier in general and especially healthier than others.

Ted in his conference, Waldinger emphasizes that media projections on what makes the happiness and -l'argent gloire- are not the ingredients nor health nor happiness. Yet this is what had answered the youth of the 1940s, when we asked them what would make them happy people. And young 2000s responded exactly the same. It seems that these old and young all these future old do wrong. But beware! All relationships do not work. Facebook friends do not count, for example. And it is not enough not to have a partner: you must be happy with two (if you mouth to your wife for twenty years, so this is bad for his health) and if you have true friends, must be able to rely on it (one who has not made your drill since 1987 have there on your cancer awareness?). Quality over quantity.

The study also demonstrates that the human relations of quality do not affect only physical health but are also good for the memory as the brain ages, and that people who were in life a strong emotional bond, a person on which they can rely, without it being necessarily Bisounours relationship where everything is rosy every day, age better than others. We suspected a bit since the 1930s, science has confirmed it: finally, to be happy and in good health, wealth and fame are not worth a good friend .
Previous Post Next Post