麻豆传媒

WHEN talking with Robert Waldinger, it is difficult to ignore the fact that he seems extremely content. A side effect of his job, perhaps. As the director of the longest scientific study of happiness ever conducted, it would be rather disappointing if he was anything else.

The Harvard Study of Adult Development (HSAD) began in 1938, with 724 participants: 268 undergraduate students at Harvard College and 456 14-year-old boys who had grown up in some of the most disadvantaged neighbourhoods in Boston, Massachusetts.

All were interviewed and given medical exams on joining the study. Throughout their lives, participants had regular brain scans and blood tests and took part in further interviews, as researchers set out to find answers to what makes a happy and meaningful life.

More than eight decades later, HSAD has expanded to include three generations and more than 1300 direct descendants of the original participants. Waldinger, who is also a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and director of the Center for Psychodynamic Therapy and Research at Massachusetts General Hospital, has co-written The Good Life with the study鈥檚 associate director, Marc Schulz, bringing together case studies with the latest psychological research to share what they have learned about how to live a happy life.

Alison Flood: How do you define happiness?

Robert Waldinger: There are two big bins that happiness seems to fall into. One is hedonic happiness. It鈥檚 like, am I having fun now? It鈥檚 a moment-to-moment, fluctuating experience. Then there鈥檚 eudaimonic happiness, which is a sense of life having meaning and being worthwhile. For example, you鈥檙e reading to your child before bed. You鈥檝e read the same book eight times, but she wants you to read it again. You鈥檙e exhausted. Is this fun? No. But is this the most meaningful thing you could imagine doing? Yes. In our studies, we think about well-being a lot, which is more eudaimonic happiness than moment-to-moment happiness.

How do you track happiness throughout a person鈥檚 life?

We have questionnaires that literally ask questions like 鈥渉ow happy are you?鈥�. But that鈥檚 not the whole story. Someone could tell you 鈥測es, I鈥檓 happy鈥� because they think they鈥檙e supposed to, but they may not be. So we also measure well-being by, for example, asking: 鈥淲ho could you call in the middle of the night if you were sick or scared?鈥� Those aren鈥檛 direct questions about whether you are happy, but about how connected you are and how secure you feel in those connections.

We also do medical tests 鈥� measuring stress hormones, for instance. We do a whole variety of things to try to use as many different lenses as we can to look at well-being. We only present findings that other studies have corroborated. In this kind of work, where you鈥檙e studying human beings, and it鈥檚 so messy and complicated, no single study can prove anything. And so what you want is multiple studies that point in the same direction.

With more than eight decades of data at hand, what is the most important thing you have learned?

The big, surprising takeaway is how much having warm connections with other people predicts how long you stay healthy, how long your brain will stay sharp. Having these good connections makes you less likely to get coronary artery disease. You鈥檙e even less likely to get arthritis.

Can you explain what you mean by 鈥渨arm鈥�?

Warm equals a relationship that feels supportive. That could mean emotional support, advice, financial support, logistical support. Anything that could be called supportive, as opposed to relationships that feel draining, acrimonious or exploitative.

Which relationships are best for us?

There are different kinds of relationships that confer health benefits. One type is what we call a secure attachment relationship: that person who you could call in the night if you were sick or scared. Everybody needs somebody like that in their life. Other types of relationships that convey health benefits are friendships, family relationships, work relationships. And some of them, we鈥檙e learning now, are what are called 鈥渃asual ties鈥�: the person who makes your coffee for you at the coffee shop every day, who you exchange some pleasant words with; the person who checks out your groceries in the grocery store, who you see every week. Those more casual ties turn out to give us little hits of well-being as well.

More than 200 papers have been produced from HSAD鈥檚 data. Can you tell me more about what has been discovered?

Yes, we have studies showing that warm connections actually reach across our whole lives to affect our well-being. One study from 2016 used data collected on 81 males from adolescence through to the eighth and ninth decades of life and shows that . It is pretty remarkable to see a connection across this much time because so much else happens to us. It speaks to the strength of the effect of early warmth on later well-being. A 2015 study of 81 elderly heterosexual couples showed that . And a study from 2010 of 47 older adult couples over an eight-day period showed that

Is it important to have a life partner?

We found that you don鈥檛 need to have a life partner or an intimate partner to get these benefits. Many different kinds of relationships provide us with them. A sizable percentage of people don鈥檛 have life partners or intimate partners. That does not mean you鈥檙e doomed to a life of unhappiness or poor health. You can find those good connections in other places.

Is there someone you would describe as the study鈥檚 happiest participant?

Leo. He was a man who went to Harvard and dreamed of being a writer, a journalist. But his life circumstances were such that he needed to go home after serving in the second world war and take care of an ailing parent. He got a job as a history teacher at a local school and he loved teaching. He had three daughters and he loved them. He had a good marriage. He built a life of warm, engaged relationships. It wasn鈥檛 a life where there was a huge amount of achievement, but he was very happy. He was an example of how being invested in your connections with other people is a constant source of nourishment and energy.

What about the study鈥檚 most unhappy person? There is a really moving part of your book where you talk about a man who was so isolated that, when your researcher got into the car with him, dust fell off the seatbelt because he hadn鈥檛 had a passenger for so long.

This was a man who was very isolated, but didn鈥檛 realise how isolated he was. He kept telling himself things were OK, but he was so alone. He had deep, nagging fears about connecting with people 鈥� a fear that he鈥檇 be a bother to his kids, that people wouldn鈥檛 want to be with him. He would make one decision after another that kept him away from people. We found that the people in our study who kept prioritising connections, and kept making those small decisions to connect day after day, were the people who stay happier and healthier.

Do you think that the things that make people happy have changed over the decades, or are the fundamentals consistent?

I think the fundamentals are biologically ingrained. We evolved to be social animals. That鈥檚 a very important evolutionary concept. As we evolved as a species, the people who were more social were more likely to survive and reproduce and, because of that, more likely to pass on their genes. And that鈥檚 why I think it doesn鈥檛 change that, generation after generation, we continue to need social contact.

Is there such a thing as a baseline level of happiness set by our genetics?

We believe there is. You鈥檙e pointing to something we think of as inborn temperament. You probably know people who are generally gloomy, and then you know people who are cheery and, almost no matter what, upbeat. We believe that this is somewhat biologically based, probably genetically determined. A psychologist named Sonja Lyubomirsky estimates that . About 10 per cent, she estimates, is due to life circumstances. The remaining 40 per cent of our happiness can be changed, and that means that 40 per cent is in our control. That鈥檚 a big chunk. So that鈥檚 why we spend time studying happiness and figuring out what can we do to make ourselves happier. Because we can move the needle.

When these studies started out, they were looking at white men. Are the findings of your study relevant to those outside this demographic?

Most definitely. More than half of our participants now are women. Our study includes very poor, disadvantaged people and very privileged people. About 40 per cent of our original participants were from immigrant families. Our findings are also corroborated by other studies. When many different studies of many diverse groups of people find the same thing, we have confidence that what we鈥檙e presenting is true and is relevant to people of many different demographics.

Do you think being part of the study made a difference to the lives of those who participated?

We asked them. Some people wrote back saying it didn鈥檛 affect them. Some said 鈥測our questions were a nuisance鈥�. Many said 鈥淚 knew that every year or so, I would be asked to check in on my life. And I would ask myself these questions about where鈥檚 my life going鈥�. They said 鈥渢his was a really important part of my life, and it undoubtedly changed the way I think about life鈥�. Of course, that means we weren鈥檛 a hands-off study. We affected the people we were trying to observe. But it鈥檚 impossible to do this kind of study without that happening to some extent.

In your book, you talk about 鈥渟ocial fitness鈥� 鈥� how important is it to pay attention to this and how do we improve it?

We came up with social fitness as something similar to physical fitness. If you go to the gym, you don鈥檛 come home and say: 鈥淚鈥檝e done that. I never have to exercise again.鈥� But a lot of us think that our good friends are always going to be our friends and that we don鈥檛 have to do anything to take care of those friendships. In fact, perfectly good relationships can simply wither away from neglect. So we talk about the idea that it really is important to reach out to friends and family to keep maintaining those valuable connections.

Small actions can make a difference. Sometimes, when I give a talk about this, I鈥檒l say: 鈥淥K, I want you to think about one person who you miss. Now, I want everybody to take out their phone and text that person right now. And just say 鈥榟i, I was thinking of you and wanted to say hello鈥�.鈥� When people do this, they report things like 鈥渕y friend was so glad I reached out鈥�. The point is that these tiny actions can start to have ripple effects.

Finally, what about moment-to-moment, hedonic happiness. How do we get more of that?

Ultimately, if you build strong relationships and work on maintaining these, you鈥檒l make it more likely you鈥檒l have moment-to-moment happiness by building this bedrock sense that life is good.