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It was conducted by Harvard, and lasted over 75-years. So what about you? From the looks of his humble, unadorned office at Mass General Hospital, you might never guess what Professor Robert J. Waldinger is up to: searching for the secrets to … To get the clearest picture of these lives, we don’t just send them questionnaires. The people in our 75-year study who were the happiest in retirement were the people who had actively worked to replace workmates with new playmates. The people who were the most satisfied in their relationships at age 50 were the healthiest at age 80. Over the years, researchers have studied the participants’ health trajectories and their broader lives, including their triumphs and failures in careers and marriage, and the finding have produced startling lessons, and not only for the researchers. Once we had followed our men all the way into their 80s, we wanted to look back at them at midlife and to see if we could predict who was going to grow into a happy, healthy octogenarian and who wasn’t. As director of the longest study on adult life and happiness, I've learned some surprising things about what the good life actually looks like. In this talk, he shares three important lessons learned from the study as well as some practical, old-as-the-hills wisdom on how to build a fulfilling, long life. And when, about a decade ago, we finally asked the wives if they would join us as members of the study, many of the women said, “You know, it’s about time.”. Second in an occasional series on how Harvard researchers are tackling the problematic issues of aging. And we’re constantly told to lean in to work, to push harder and achieve more. He is known for a TED talk about his findings from the Grant Study, a longitudinal study on adult happiness that's based at … When scientists began tracking the health of 268 Harvard sophomores in 1938 during the Great Depression, they hoped the longitudinal study would reveal clues to leading healthy and happy lives. And good, close relationships seem to buffer us from some of the slings and arrows of getting old. So this message, that good, close relationships are good for our health and well-being, this is wisdom that’s as old as the hills. If you were going to invest now in your future best self, where would you put your time and your energy? We went to their homes and we interviewed their parents. And another 50 percent of those same young adults said that another major life goal was to become famous. Every two years, our patient and dedicated research staff calls up our men and asks them if we can send them yet one more set of questions about their lives. They made detailed anthropometric measurements of skulls, brow bridges, and moles, wrote in-depth notes on the functioning of major organs, examined brain activity through electroencephalograms, and even analyzed the men’s handwriting. They all finished college during World War II, and then most went off to serve in the war. He is a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and Zen priest. We draw their blood, we scan their brains, we talk to their children. Lessons from the longest study on happiness | Robert Waldinger What keeps us happy and healthy as we go through life? What we’d really like is a quick fix, something we can get that’ll make our lives good and keep them that way. It turns out that being in a securely attached relationship to another person in your 80s is protective, that the people who are in relationships where they really feel they can count on the other person in times of need, those people’s memories stay sharper longer. Encouraging and interesting talk about Relationships: the key to a good life, by Robert Waldinger. Robert Waldinger is a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and Zen priest. にするものは何でしょう?名声や富 ― そう考える人はたくさんいます。しかし、心理学者ロバート・ウォールディンガーに拠ると、それは間違っているのです。 Some participants went on to become successful businessmen, doctors, lawyers, and others ended up as schizophrenics or alcoholics, but not on inevitable tracks. Since 1938, we’ve tracked the lives of two groups of men. High-conflict marriages, for example, without much affection, turn out to be very bad for our health, perhaps worse than getting divorced. For 75 years, we’ve tracked the lives of 724 men, year after year, asking about their work, their home lives, their health, and of course asking all along the way without knowing how their life stories were going to turn out. In that sense, the study itself represents a history of the changes that life brings. Researchers also found that those with strong social support experienced less mental deterioration as they aged. “And those good relationships, they don’t have to be smooth all the time. The good life is built with good relationships. And those good relationships, they don’t have to be smooth all the time. It never ends. And then these teenagers grew up into adults who entered all walks of life. But the people who were in unhappy relationships, on the days when they reported more physical pain, it was magnified by more emotional pain. The study’s fourth director, Waldinger has expanded research to the wives and children of the original men. Of the original Harvard cohort recruited as part of the Grant Study, only 19 are still alive, all in their mid-90s. Professor Robert Waldinger is director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, one of the world’s longest studies of adult life. The clearest message that we get from this 75-year study is this: Good relationships keep us happier and healthier. That, I think, is the revelation.”. If you were going to invest now in your future best self, where would you put your time and your energy? 1937 - - Clark Heath and Arlie Bock –physicians at HUHS envisioned studying health They would not have dreamed that the Study would continue for almost 70 years Most longitudinal studies never January 1, 2016 by Robert Waldinger There is much we can learn about the good life from simply listening to those who have lived it. During the intervening decades, the control groups have expanded. She joined the effort after coming across Waldinger’s TED talk in one of her classes. Those who kept warm relationships got to live longer and happier, said Waldinger, and the loners often died earlier. The researchers also found that marital satisfaction has a protective effect on people’s mental health. Part of a study found that people who had happy marriages in their 80s reported that their moods didn’t suffer even on the days when they had more physical pain. My name is Robert Waldinger, and I’m a Harvard psychiatrist, Zen priest, and psychoanalyst. “We’re trying to see how people manage stress, whether their bodies are in a sort of chronic ‘fight or flight’ mode,” Waldinger said. Psychiatrist Robert Waldinger is the director of the longest study on happiness in history. Robert Waldinger is the Director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, one of the most comprehensive longitudinal studies in history. It’s as powerful as smoking or alcoholism.”, “When the study began, nobody cared about empathy or attachment. The people who were the most satisfied in their relationships at age 50 were the healthiest at age 80.”. I direct the Harvard Study of Adult Development, which is possibly the longest study of adult life ever done. Asked what lessons he has learned from the study, Waldinger, who is a Zen priest, said he practices meditation daily and invests time and energy in his relationships, more than before. That finding proved true across the board among both the Harvard men and the inner-city participants. Social psychologist details research at University-wide faculty seminar, Professor of medicine and Chan School graduate is MGH infectious diseases chief, Chan School Dean Williams details need for Biden ‘action agenda’, Medical School researchers uncover link between obesity, cancer, © 2020 The President and Fellows of Harvard College. Among the original recruits were eventual President John F. Kennedy and longtime Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee. And the sad fact is that at any given time, more than one in five Americans will report that they’re lonely. For 75 years, we’ve tracked the lives of 724 men, year after year, asking about their work, their home lives, their health, and of course asking all along the way without knowing how their life stories were going to turn out. Researchers who have pored through data, including vast medical records and hundreds of in-person interviews and questionnaires, found a strong correlation between men’s flourishing lives and their relationships with family, friends, and community. Period. The first group started in the study when they were sophomores at Harvard College. Those ties protect people from life’s discontents, help to delay mental and physical decline, and are better predictors of long and happy lives than social class, IQ, or even genes. Lara Tang ’18, a human and evolutionary biology concentrator who recently joined the team as a research assistant, relishes the opportunity to help find some of those answers. Robert Waldinger, a psychiatrist, professor at Harvard Medical School, and the director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development decided to find that one thing that makes a good life, helps us become happier and healthier. The Harvard Study of Adult Development may be the longest study of adult life that’s ever been done. It turns out that living in the midst of conflict is really bad for our health. “So I try to pay more attention to my relationships than I used to.”, Experts say cultural resources may help heal battered nation after brutal 2020, Michael Stern, CEO of The Climate Corporation, speaks of the need for farmers to immediately react to environmental setbacks as the effects of climate change reduce the viability of farm lands across the globe. In a book called “Aging Well,” Vaillant wrote that six factors predicted healthy aging for the Harvard men: physical activity, absence of alcohol abuse and smoking, having mature mechanisms to cope with life’s ups and downs, and enjoying both a healthy weight and a stable marriage. (Women weren’t in the original study because the College was still all male.). Early researchers believed that physical constitution, intellectual ability, and personality traits determined adult development. For 75 years, my team (and our predecessors) tracked the lives of 724 men. But over and over, over these 75 years, our study has shown that the people who fared the best were the people who leaned in to relationships, with family, with friends, with community. Under the first director, Clark Heath, who stayed from 1938 until 1954, the study mirrored the era’s dominant view of genetics and biological determinism. 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. Since aging starts at birth, people should start taking care of themselves at every stage of life, the researchers say. And we know that you can be lonely in a crowd and you can be lonely in a marriage, so the second big lesson that we learned is that it’s not just the number of friends you have, and it’s not whether or not you’re in a committed relationship, but it’s the quality of your close relationships that matters. “Loneliness kills,” he said. Pictures of entire lives, of the choices that people make and how those choices work out for them, those pictures are almost impossible to get. What are the lessons that come from the tens of thousands of pages of information that we’ve generated on these lives? What makes us happy and healthy as we go through life?If you want to invest in "the good life," where should you put your time and energy? But the key to healthy aging is relationships, relationships, relationships.”, How pandemic set back efforts to fight other deadly global health problems, Brighter days for arts forecast in Biden administration. The more factors the subjects had in place, the better the odds they had for longer, happier lives. 精神科医、心理学者のロバート・ウォールディンガー氏「よい人生をもたらすものとは?幸せに関する最長の研究の結果からの学び」となります。, 一生を通し、私達を幸福で健康にするものは何でしょう?名声や富 ―そう考える人はたくさんいます。しかし、心理学者ロバート・ウォールディンガー氏は「間違っている」と発言しています。75年に渡る成人発達に関する研究のディレクターであるウォールディンガーは、真の幸福と満足感に関する無類のデータをベースに、この研究結果が私達に教える「3つの重要な教訓」「昔からの知恵」「幸せな長寿の秘訣を」をTEDで語ります。. The fourth director of the study, Robert Waldinger, a psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital and a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, said the study … We’re given the impression that these are the things that we need to go after in order to have a good life. Waldinger, the director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, said in a viral 2015 "TED Talk" released in 2015, that "good relationships keep … Sign up for daily emails to get the latest Harvard news. The first is that social connections are really good for us, and that loneliness kills. There was a recent survey of millennials asking them what their most important life goals were, and over 80 percent said that a major life goal for them was to get rich. Lessons from the Longest Study on Happiness,” in 2015, and it has been viewed 13,000,000 times. What Keeps Us Healthy and Happy? Study director, Dr. Robert Waldinger, was recently featured on CBS's "This Morning" TED Talk Our director Dr. Robert Waldinger recently gave a TED Talk in Boston about lessons from the first generation Study of Adult Development. It turns out that people who are more socially connected to family, to friends, to community, are happier, they’re physically healthier, and they live longer than people who are less well connected. And the experience of loneliness turns out to be toxic. Our most happily partnered men and women reported, in their 80s, that on the days when they had more physical pain, their mood stayed just as happy. Lessons From the More than a decade ago, researchers began including wives in the Grant and Glueck studies. Well, the lessons aren’t about wealth or fame or working harder and harder. “On the other hand, alcoholism and major depression could take people who started life as stars and leave them at the end of their lives as train wrecks.”. And living in the midst of good, warm relationships is protective. If you think it's fame and money, you're not alone – but, according to psychiatrist Robert Waldinger, you're mistaken. In our study, we followed individuals as they progressed through life, seeing for ourselves what hindsight often misses. If you think it's fame and money, you're not alone – but, according to psychiatrist Robert Waldinger, you're mistaken. Robert Waldinger, professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital and head of the long-running Harvard Study of Adult Development, agreed that loneliness can impact health and warned We’ve learned three big lessons about relationships. We videotape them talking with their wives about their deepest concerns. But what if we could watch entire lives as they unfold through time? As the director of a 75-year-old study on adult development, Waldinger has unprecedented access to data on true happiness and satisfaction. 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