In 1938, a group of Harvard scientists began a study to answer the question: What makes people happy?

Initially, 724 people fell under the microscope of researchers – these were boys from disadvantaged Boston families and students of an educational institution. Then their spouses were added, then children, then grandchildren. The Harvard researchers eventually included 1,300 offspring from the original group in their study.

At regular intervals, they collected information about the participants, from their financial situation and career progression to their health. These were people who married and divorced, experienced success and failure, became parents or orphans, amassed wealth or lived in financial hardship.

In the longest-running study in history, there was one conclusion: the “key” to human happiness is good interpersonal relationships. But how are good relationships cultivated?

The current leaders of the Harvard study attempt to answer this question on the assumption that, as Robert Waldinger and Mark Schultz point out in The Atlantic, our personal relationships are not always our top priority.

For example, in the United States in 2018, the average American spent a total of 11 hours a day alone. Over the course of 29 years, 58 days spent with a friend may be a tiny fraction of the 4,851 days spent on television or on the Internet.

They point out that the help of science or the analysis of some of the results is not necessary to understand how relationships affect our psychology. It is enough to evoke in his memory the feeling of rejuvenation that comes upon him after a good conversation or the tension that he experiences after a fight.

Seen in this light, healthy and satisfying relationships offer a kind of well-being or social adjustment. And just as it happens with physical well-being, a certain “form”, so in the case of social well-being, exercises are needed to maintain it at a good level.

But what kind of exercise could it be? Experts say the answer comes from questionnaires that ask study participants to fill out. There, 1,300 people in the sample were asked to think about themselves and the people they love. And for some of them, as it turns out, this reflection works beneficially.

This is a practice that can help anyone. But this does not mean that it is simple and easy. Both researchers acknowledge that some participants are wary, others remain alive with doubts, leaving entire pages of the questionnaire blank, someone wrote in the margin “but what are these questions!”.

Thinking about the course and difficulties of life is not easy. However, the importance of social adjustment is enormous when you consider that loneliness, a condition with negative health consequences, tends to reach epidemic proportions.

In a recent online survey of 55,000 people around the world, one in three people of all ages said they feel lonely. Among them, the age group that experienced the feeling most strongly was those aged 16-24, with 40% of them reporting that they only experience it “often” and “very often”.

The 2020 survey also found that 32% of adults in Japan expected to experience loneliness within a year, while in the 2019 survey in the US, three in four said they experienced mild to high levels of loneliness.

Since similar finds were found in the UK, the government decided to create a ministry for loneliness. However, for specialists, the fight against the epidemic is not an easy task, since loneliness is a subjective experience: people feel lonely even if they have family or friends, while others may have minimal contact, but not experience negative emotions.

This means that the objective circumstances of a person’s life are not enough to explain why he feels lonely. Ultimately, it seems that emotions are determined by the difference between the social contacts that a person maintains and those that he really wants to have.

As Waldinger and Schultz point out in their new book, The Good Life: Lessons from the World’s Longest-running Scientific Study of Happiness, this condition highlights the importance of the quality of interpersonal relationships. Neglecting them, they point out, is dangerous for us.

Not only is it necessary, but it is also possible to invest in social well-being every day, every week of your life. Of course, putting his interpersonal relationships first.

Source: RES-IPE