Fortune and fame will never make us happy, 75-year Harvard medical school study suggests
75-year study reveals that it is our family and friends that keep us happy and healthy throughout life
Fortune and fame will never make us happy, suggests the findings of a Harvard University Medical School study 75 years in the making.
Close relations are the key to being truly content and safely shielded from the miseries of a cold world, it would seem, posit decades of medical study at one of America’s top schools.
Professor Dr Robert Waldinger, Director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, told hundreds gathered for the first Global Dialogue on Happiness in Dubai yesterday the secret to happiness appears to lie within your loved ones.
Those who do not have the support of a close-knit community may find attaining happiness difficult.
“Close relationships are the strongest indicators of what would keep people health and happy throughout their lives,” Dr Waldinger said at the conference ahead of today’s launch of the three-day World Government Summit in Dubai.
In the life-long study of Harvard male students and underprivileged boys from Boston in parallel right through until today, the study shows that subjects who have meaningful connections with relatives, friends and colleagues fared better throughout life.
“Those with happier relationships, stayed healthier,” said Dr Waldinger, adding those who are surrounded by loved ones are “less likely to develop cognitive decline”.
With US statistics reporting that one in five people say they are lonely, it is that isolation that is contributing to less happiness and early death, he said. “Loneliness turns out to be toxic not only for happiness but also for health.”
Relationships do not have to be perfect, he said, just based on mutual trust and confidence in one another to make us feel connected to the world around us.
“One of the things that we found is that relationships don’t have to be smooth,” said Dr Waldinger. “People need someone who they believe they can count on when things get hard.”
He joked that if aliens visited earth and their first exposure to humans was through Facebook, the skewed profiles of millions of people showing faux happiness would lead to a distorted view of people on earth.