A Look Inside the Long-Term Lives of Harvard Graduates
In 1937, Harvard Medical School Professor Arlie Bock launched what is now known as the pinnacle of research tracking a person's private history over a long period of time, by conducting a study on the lives of 268 sophomores at the university. It is also known as the Grant Study after shopping center mogul W.T. Grant funded the research. The study was an attempt to see whether there was a formula to happiness. Out of the 268 subjects, half passed away. The remaining ones are now in their 80s and 90s.
Professor George Vaillant, who led the study from 1967, introduced a file showing the lifetime achievements of the subjects, and described them by quoting William Blake. He said their lives were "a delicate weaving of happiness and grief."
They got off to exhilarating beginnings, demonstrating their roots as elite students. Four of them ran for senate and one even became president. Another became a famous writer. But starting around 1948, 10 years after the study began, 20 of them complained of serious mental problems. When the subjects turned 50, one-third suffered from mental problems. The Atlantic Monthly reported that beneath the intellectual Harvard shell beat troubled hearts.
Seven factors allowing a person to age happily were identified. The first was a mature attitude, allowing one to adapt to pain, while education, a stable marriage, refraining from smoking and drinking, proper exercise, and a healthy weight were also required. Half of the 106 subjects who met five to six of these requirements in their 50s were happy and well in their 80s. Only 7.5 percent were unhappy. In contrast, none of the subjects who met less than three of these requirements in their 50s were happy and healthy in their 80s. Subjects who met less than three of these requirements were three times as likely to die before they reached 80.
One's cholesterol reading at 50 had no effect on longevity. One's personality during childhood had less influence over the long term. Shy children were living happily and healthily in their 70s, just like outgoing children. Steady exercising in college left a positive impact on mental health rather than physical condition.
The keys to successful old age weren't intellectual capacity or social status, but social aptitude or personal relationships. Sibling harmony also proved significant. 93 percent of the subjects doing well at 65 were those who had good relationships with their siblings.
Dr. Vaillant said life emits radical frequencies that cannot be discovered using any type of data. He said the results of the study were too human to be assessed scientifically, too beautiful to be quantified, and too everlasting to be limited to publication in a scholarly journal.
http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2009/05/16/2009051600175.html
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