Quality of Life Research:
Lessons on Living Well
Quality of life research in the last 50 years has shed great light on the subject of The Good Life.
Whereas discussions on happiness historically filled the halls of religious and philosophical institutions (and of course the bar, the street corner, and the local self-help bookstore), research on quality of life and happiness now resides prominently in the halls of academia as well.
There are several quality of life research publications that have fascinated me in the last several years. On this page I'll focus on two major ones, and at the end I'll share with you some other nuggets of quality of life research I found interesting.
Enjoy!
QUALITY OF LIFE RESEARCH STUDY:
THE GRANT STUDY AT HARVARD
The Grant study followed the entire lives of 268 men in the Harvard class of 1937.
It began with full physical and psychological evaluations of all the young men, and for 73 years it followed progress in all areas of their life - physical, social, emotional, and professional.
This study was the longest quality of life research project ever conducted, and it has been presided over since the 1960's by psychologist Dr. George Vaillaint.
Last year, Joshua Shenk with the Atlantic monthly wrote an excellent article discussing this study. Click here for the link to the Atlantic article about the study.
The study traces the stories of these men's lives, many of which include unbelievable changes. Many students who started off brilliantly fizzled out and developed problems; many students who began with problems worked through them and died happy old men.
There are several key insights from the study that struck me:
Predictors of Happiness: The study identified the the key variables in happiness. These variables were: education, stable marriage, not smoking, not abusing alcohol, some exercise and healthy weight, and developing healthy adaptations (which I'll discuss in a moment.) The predictive power of these factors is high. Shenk describes the findings:
"Of the 106 Harvard men who had five or six of these factors in their favor at age 50, half ended up at 80 as what Vaillant called “happy-well” and only 7.5 percent as “sad-sick.” Meanwhile, of the men who had three or fewer of the health factors at age 50, none ended up “happy-well” at 80. Even if they had been in adequate physical shape at 50, the men who had three or fewer protective factors were three times as likely to be dead at 80 as those with four or more factors."
The Importance of Using "Mature Adaptations" and Working Through Suffering: The lives of these men show that working through suffering (failed relationships, lost jobs, trauma, setbacks) brings happiness in the long term. When the men worked through their suffering using "mature adaptations" they led happier lives in the end. These mature adaptations include altruism, humor, anticipation, delayed gratification, and sublimation.
In the Atlantic article, Shenk describes the difference between mature adaptations and the other types of adaptations:
"At the bottom of the pile are the unhealthiest, or “psychotic,” adaptations—like paranoia, hallucination, or megalomania—which, while they can serve to make reality tolerable for the person employing them, seem crazy to anyone else.
One level up are the “immature” adaptations, which include acting out, passive aggression, hypochondria, projection, and fantasy. These aren’t as isolating as psychotic adaptations, but they impede intimacy.
“Neurotic” defenses are common in “normal” people. These include intellectualization (mutating the primal stuff of life into objects of formal thought); dissociation (intense, often brief, removal from one’s feelings); and repression, which, Vaillant says, can involve “seemingly inexplicable naïveté, memory lapse, or failure to acknowledge input from a selected sense organ.”
The healthiest, or “mature,” adaptations include altruism, humor, anticipation (looking ahead and planning for future discomfort), suppression (a conscious decision to postpone attention to an impulse or conflict, to be addressed in good time), and sublimation (finding outlets for feelings, like putting aggression into sport, or lust into courtship)."
The Importance of Relationships: In the study, Vailliant found that the strength of relationships at age 47 predicted late-life adjustment better than any other variable, except adaptations (discussed above).
Look at the Whole Story: The study clearly demonstrated how lives can change course over time. Those that started brilliantly sometimes developed problems and died early; those that started off troubled often worked through their problems and emerged happy in later life.
Shenk describes this much more poetically than I can:
"This means that a glimpse of any one moment in a life can be deeply misleading. A man at 20 who appears the model of altruism may turn out to be a kind of emotional prodigy—or he may be ducking the kind of engagement with reality that his peers are both moving toward and defending against. And, on the other extreme, a man at 20 who appears impossibly wounded may turn out to be gestating toward maturity."
Again, I think this is an excellent article on quality of life research. Click here for the link to the Atlantic article.
QUALITY OF LIFE RESEARCH PUBLICATION #2:
POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTHENTIC HAPPINESS
Whereas traditional psychology focused on mental illness, positive psychology has turned to study human joy, thriving, satisfaction, fulfillment, flow, and happiness.
There are many excellent scientists in this field, including Martin Seligman (UPenn), Barbara Frederickson (UNC), Tal Ben-Shahar (Haravard), and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Claremont), among others.
One book I love in this field is Authentic Happiness, by Dr. Martin Seligman, a former head of the American Psychological Association and a pioneer in the field of positive psychology. This book surveys the field and presents some amazing findings, including an equation to understand happiness.
Happiness = Set Range + Circumstances + Voluntary Factors
Your set range means your genetic disposition towards happiness. It accounts for about 50% of your happiness.
Changing circumstances can account for between 8-15% of your happiness (p. 60)
Voluntary factors, particularly how you interpret the past, present, and future, account for nearly 40%. Much of positive psychology focuses on this variable and helps people develop gratitude, optimism, positive emotion, and the ability to use their natural strengths.
Here are some fascinating statistics Dr. Seligman presents:
- "Optimists live longer than pessimists." (p. 40)
- "The key differentiator between very happy people and average and unhappy people is "a rich and fulfilling social life." (p 42)
- "Wealth is correlated with happiness to a point, but after basic needs are met wealth has almost no correlation with happiness." (p. 48)
- "Recent changes in an individual's pay predict job satisfaction. Average average levels of pay do not." (p. 48)
- "40% of married people say they're very happy, while only 24 percent of unmarried, divorced, separated, or widowed people said this." (p. 55)
Authentic Happiness is full of other interesting statistics and conclusions from quality of life research, as well as strategies for increasing your happiness.
Other Interesting Nuggets of Quality of Life research:
Here are a few other interesting items of recent quality of life research from various places I find particularly interesting:
- "People who use their strengths everyday are six times as likely to be engaged in their jobs and more than three times as likely to report having an excellent quality of life overall." (3)
- "The daily activities most associated with happiness: sex, socializing after work, having dinner with others." (4)
- "The Daily activity most injurious to happiness is commuting."(4)
- "Joining a group that meets even just once a month produces the same happiness gain as doubling your income."(4)
- "According to one study, being married produces a psychic gain equivalent to more than $1000,000 per year." (4)
- "22 million US workers are "actively negative" and "actively disengaged" in their jobs." (Actively disengaged means actually working against the company you work for.) (5, p. 33)
- "In marriages, the "magic ratio" of positive to negative interactions is 5 to 1. When the ratio approaches 1 to 1, marriages cascade to divorce." (5, p 55. Citing Gottman, John (1994) Why Marriages Succeed or Fail. . .and How You Can Make Yours Last. New York: Fireside)
I hope you've enjoyed this page on quality of life research.
I encourage you to also check out my page on the recipe for happiness, based on quality of life and happiness research. I consolidate these findings down to specific suggestions for happiness.
Cheers!
(1) Schenk, Joshua Wolf. (June 2009). "What Makes Us Happy." Atlantic Monthly Magazine. (This article discusses the Harvard Grant study, the longest longitudinal study on happiness ever. Click here to link to it.)
(2) Seligman, Martin (2002). Authentic Happiness. NY, NY: Simon & Schuster.
(3) Rath, Tom (2007). Strengthsfinder 2.0. New York: Gallup Press
(4) Brooks, David. (Mar 29, 2010) "The Sandra Bullock Trade." New York Times.
(5) Rath, Tom and Clifton, Donald (2004). How Full is Your Bucket. New York: Gallup Press
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