What Makes People Happy?
Vanity Fair:
Is there a formula—some mix of love, work, and psychological adaptation—for a good life? For 72 years, researchers at Harvard have been examining this question, following 268 men who entered college in the late 1930s through war, career, marriage and divorce, parenthood and grandparenthood, and old age. Here, for the first time, a journalist gains access to the archive of one of the most comprehensive longitudinal studies in history. Its contents, as much literature as science, offer profound insight into the human condition—and into the brilliant, complex mind of the study’s longtime director, George Vaillant.
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Video
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Source:
What Makes Us Happy?
Joshua Wolf Shenk
The ATLANTIC, JUNE 2009
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200906/happiness
May 31st, 2009 at 7:37 pm
This is great, as well as the “Sorry, I am late” post. Keep it up Barry, this is the type of stuff that will keep you on top of your game.
May 31st, 2009 at 8:00 pm
One small typo, Barry: You have Vanity Fair listed as the source, not the Atlantic.
May 31st, 2009 at 9:23 pm
This is as simple as it is timeless:
Happiness is achieved by crushing your enemies, seeing them driven before you while listening to the lamentations of their women.
These goddamn academics over-think everything.
June 1st, 2009 at 1:37 pm
“Virtually all of the men ammounted to something at age 45-50″. Not quite applicable to the rest of the population. They are all Harvard boys, the elite school of the world. How about performing the same study at average college USA.
June 3rd, 2009 at 10:24 am
the harvard study is a longitudinal sample of college age men, including by chance the young john f. kennedy, tracked to the end of life. it is really more a study of adaptation, maturation and character than of happiness. the study director, george vailliant, has written about the study results from a psychoanalytic point of view.
what makes people happy? the answer is pretty basic: exceeding your expectations. (the same formula predicts customer satisfaction in business: meeting or exceeding product or service performance makes a happy customer.) if your entire net worth is two potatoes, but you expected at the time to only have one turnip, then you are happy. if you have two mcmansions, but expected by this time to have four, then you are unhappy. this is why wealth does not predict happiness very well, within or across cultures.
June 3rd, 2009 at 1:39 pm
I cannot speak for the actual study, but the video is the most content-free six minutes I’ve ever viewed. Is this what a Harvard lecture is like?
Generally, if I see a blog entry that I feel would be of interest or benefit (or amusement) to others, I bring up my email program and continue to read/watch, thinking all the time of who I ought to send a link to.
This time, I just closed the program and walked away.