NOTES

Chapter 1: What Makes a Good Life?

1. “There isn’t time, so brief is life”: Samuel Clemens, Mark Twain, wrote this in an August 20, 1886, letter to Clara Spaulding. en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Twain.
2. In a 2007 survey, millennials were asked: This survey information comes from Jean M. Twenge and colleagues (2012), “Generational Differences in Young Adults’ Life Goals, Concern for Others, and Civic Orientation.”
3. the good life unfolds, through time. It is a process: The psychologist Carl Rogers had a similar idea about the pursuit of a good life being a journey. In 1961, in On Becoming a Person (p. 186), he wrote, “The good life is a process not a state of being. It is a direction, not a destination.”
4. the act of recalling an event can actually change our memory of it: Elizabeth Loftus at the University of Washington has done extensive work in this area. For a profile of her, and a summary of her papers on “memory distortion,” see Nick Zagorski (2005), “Profile of Elizabeth F. Loftus.”
5. Studies… come in two flavors: “cross-sectional” and “longitudinal”: Controlled experiments with random assignment to different conditions are another critical method for understanding human health and behavior. Experiments typically unfold in short passages of time, but they can be used to study some phenomena over longer periods.
6. most successful prospective longitudinal studies maintain 30 to 70 percent of their participants: See Kristin Gustavson and colleagues (2012), “Attrition and Generalizability in Longitudinal Studies.”
7. Ananya, from India: This is the only person in the book outside of the Harvard Study participants whose name is disguised. Like the Study participants, we changed her name to protect her privacy.
8. The British Cohort Studies: The Centre for Longitudinal Studies at University College London is the home of four of these five extraordinary studies (https://cls.ucl.ac.uk/cls-studies/). Science journalist Helen Pearson wrote an account of the British Cohort Studies in 2016: The Life Project.
9. The Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study: See Olsson and colleagues (2013), “A 31-Year Longitudinal Study of Child and Adolescent Pathways to Well-Being in Adulthood.”
10. The Kauai Longitudinal Study: Emmy Werner (1993), “Risk, Resilience, and Recovery.”
11. The Chicago Health, Aging, and Social Relations Study: John T. Cacioppo and Stephanie Cacioppo (2018), “The Population-Based Longitudinal Chicago Health, Aging, and Social Relations Study.”
12. The Healthy Aging in Neighborhoods of Diversity Across the Life Span: Tessa K. Novick and colleagues (2021), “Health-Related Social Needs.”
13. the Student Council Study: The original data and study materials were recently rediscovered and are being maintained by the Harvard Study of Adult Development in preparation for future archiving. The Student Council Study was planned and initiated by Earl Bond, MD, and continued by Rachel Dunaway Cox, PhD. Cox’s 1970 book, Youth into Maturity, documents the study.
14. In China, loneliness among older adults has… increased: Ye Luo and Linda J. Waite (2014), “Loneliness and Mortality Among Older Adults in China.”
15. But what we find by looking at the entirety of research: Research from the Mills Study (R. Helson and colleagues, 2002, “The Growing Evidence for Personality Change in Adulthood”) mentioned earlier in this chapter has provided evidence that personality continues to evolve in adulthood.
16. You can be lonely in a crowd: John Cacioppo and William Patrick (2008), Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection.
17. The people who were the most satisfied in their relationships at age 50 were the healthiest… at age 80: See 2001 article by George Vaillant and K. Mukamal, “Successful Aging.”
18. Our most happily partnered men and women: See 2010 paper by Robert J. Waldinger and Marc S. Schulz, “What’s Love Got to Do with It?”
19. A few touchstone examples: For the HANDLS study, see Tessa K. Novick and colleagues (2021), “Health-Related Social Needs.” For the CHASRS findings, see John T. Cacioppo and colleagues (2008), “The Chicago Health, Aging, Social Relations Study.” And for the Dunedin findings, see Olsson and colleagues (2013), “A 32-Year Longitudinal Study.”

Chapter 2: Why Relationships Matter

1. “The best ideas aren’t hidden in shadowy recesses”: Richard Farson and Ralph Keyes (2002), Whoever Makes the Most Mistakes.
2. These feelings, big and small… feeling of stress: John T. Cacioppo and colleagues (2014), “Evolutionary Mechanisms for Loneliness.”
3. Researchers at the University of Chicago turned their local train into an affective forecasting experiment: Nicholas Epley and Juliana Schroeder (2014), “Mistakenly Seeking Solitude.”
4. There is a lot of research… human beings are bad at affective forecasting: See, for example, Timothy D. Wilson and Daniel T. Gilbert (2005), “Affective Forecasting: Knowing What to Want”; and Wilson and Gilbert (2003), “Affective Forecasting.”
5. we pay a lot of attention to potential costs and downplay… potential benefits: Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky’s seminal research and theory (“Prospect Theory”) makes just this point. Kahneman was recognized with a Nobel Prize for this research and theory. See Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky (1979), “Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk.” See also A. P. McGraw and colleagues (2010), “Comparing Gains and Losses”; and Gillian M. Sandstrom and Erica J. Boothby (2021) “Why Do People Avoid Talking to Strangers? A Mini Meta-analysis of Predicted Fears and Actual Experiences Talking to a Stranger.”
6. David Foster Wallace used a parable: Wallace’s 2005 commencement address to Kenyon College as quoted in “David Foster Wallace on Life and Work,” Wall Street Journal, September 19, 2008.
7. “The life of money-making is one undertaken under compulsion”: Aristotle wrote this in chapter 5 of Nicomachean Ethics in 350 BCE. The quotation can be found online in a translation by W. D. Ross here: http://classics.mit.edu//Aristotle/nicomachaen.html.
8. “Money has never made man happy, nor will it”: This quote from Benjamin Franklin appears on page 128 of Samuel Austin Allibone’s 1880 book, Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay.
9. “Don’t make money your goal”: This quote from Maya Angelou was posted on her Facebook page on May 1, 2009.
10. What We Talk About When We Talk About Money: Psychologist Abraham Maslow developed a model of human needs, known as “Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs,” often represented by a pyramid or triangle divided into five sections, with physiological needs like food, water, and rest at the bottom, “self-actualization” at the very top, and “social belonging” seated directly in the middle. While this model has been criticized for its emphasis on self-actualization, its perspective that the most meaningful areas of life are dependent upon more basic needs has proven true over many years of research. Any honest answer to the question What really matters? must first address physiological needs and safety. We believe that Maslow’s third tier, “social belonging,” is in the proper place only in that it is at the center of everything.
11. Angus Deaton and Daniel Kahneman… the relationship of money to happiness: See the 2010 article by Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton, “High Income Improves Evaluation of Life but Not Emotional Well-being.”
12. $75,000 per year, which was close to the average family income in the U.S. at the time of the study: Mean family income in the U.S. in 2010 when Kahneman and Deaton’s study was published was $78,180 according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis: fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MAFAINUSA646N.
13. a basic amount of money allows people to… have some control over life: One notable example regarding control at work, which is generally lower in lower-status jobs: the amount of control one has over work schedules and wages was a major predictor of health disparities in the British Whitehall Longitudinal Studies. Workers with less control were sicker. See the 1997 paper by Michael G. Marmot and colleagues, “Contribution of Job Control and Other Risk Factors to Social Variations in Coronary Heart Disease Incidence.” See also Hans Bosma and colleagues (1997), “Low Job Control and Risk of Coronary Heart Disease in Whitehall II (Prospective Cohort) Study.”
14. cultures that vary in wealth: One notable study by Matthew Killingsworth challenges this conclusion. Reported well-being in this study continues to rise when income surpasses $75,000, but to a substantially narrower degree with each increase. See Killingsworth (2021) and Kieran Healy (2021).
15. “More money does not necessarily buy more happiness… emotional pain.”: See Kahneman and Deaton (2010).
16. “badges of ability”: Richard Sennett and Jonathan Cobb (1972), The Hidden Injuries of Class.
17. the more we compare ourselves to others… the less happy we are: See the 2015 paper by Philippe Verduyn and colleagues, “Passive Facebook Usage Undermines Affective Well-being: Experimental and Longitudinal Evidence.” Also see Judith B. White and colleagues (2006), “Frequent Social Comparisons and Destructive Emotions and Behaviors: The Dark Side of Social Comparisons.”
18. Reinhold Niebuhr’s “Serenity Prayer”: A version of this prayer is now commonly used in Alcoholics Anonymous and other twelve-step programs.
19. startling and influential paper published in the journal Science: See the article by James S. House and colleagues (1988), “Social Relationships and Health.”
20. Blacks had a higher risk of dying… though that difference was relatively small: These disparities continue to exist. In the United States, whites live 3.6 years longer than Blacks (Max Roberts, Eric N. Reither, and Sojoung Lim, 2020, “Contributors to the Black-White Life Expectancy Gap in Washington D.C.”). In the U.S., for individuals born in 2016, life expectancy overall is 78.7. In Finland, life expectancy is 81.4 These data come from: data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.LE00.FE.IN?end=2019&locations=FI&start=2001.
21. another much larger study cemented the connection between relationships and risk of mortality: Julianne Holt-Lunstad and colleagues (2010), “Social Relationships and Mortality: A Meta-analytic Review.”
22. the leading cause of preventable death: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Office on Smoking and Health: “The Health Consequences of Smoking—50 Years of Progress: A Report of the Surgeon General.” Atlanta: 2014. https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/sgr/50th-anniversary/index.htm
23. study after study… continues to reinforce the connection between good relationships and health: In 2015, Julianne Holt-Lunstad and colleagues published another meta-analysis showing that social isolation and loneliness were both associated with increased likelihood of mortality. See Holt-Lunstad and colleagues (2015), “Loneliness and Social Isolation as Risk Factors for Mortality: A Meta-analytic Review.”
24. regardless of a person’s location, age, ethnicity, or background: Three research examples to illustrate the diversity of samples showing the association of social connections and health (both physical and psychological):

    In the Healthy Aging in Neighborhoods of Diversity Across the Life Span (HANDLS) study in Baltimore with a cohort of 3,720 Black and White adults (aged 35–64), participants that reported receiving more social support also reported less depression. Novick and colleagues (2021), “Health Related Social Needs.”

    In the birth cohort study based in Dunedin, New Zealand, social connections in adolescence predicted well-being in adulthood better than academic achievement. Olsson and colleagues (2013), “A 32-Year Longitudinal Study.”

    In the Chicago Health, Aging, and Social Relations Study (CHASRS), a representative study of Chicago residents, those who were in satisfying relationships reported higher levels of happiness. John Cacioppo and colleagues (2018), “The Population-Based Longitudinal Chicago Health, Aging, and Social Relations Study.”

25. Our actions… account for about 40 percent of our happiness: This estimate comes from interesting work done by Sonja Lyubomirsky and colleagues in 2005, “Pursuing Happiness: The Architecture of Sustainable Change.”
26. David Foster Wallace, in his Kenyon commencement: Wallace (2018), “David Foster Wallace on Life and Work.”
27. “Love by its very nature… is unworldly”: Hannah Arendt (1958), The Human Condition.

Chapter 3: Relationships on the Winding Road of Life

1. “Our destiny is frequently met in the very paths we take to avoid it”: From La Fontaine’s fable “The Horoscope.” This is a common translation of the French. It is also translated as “Fearing the fate that one would skirt, it / often befalls that, rather than avert it, / One takes the path that leads to it directly.” La Fontaine, The Complete Fables, p. 209.
2. The Greeks had various versions… grammar school: For a description of the Greeks’ versions of life stages, see R. Larry Overstreet (2009), “The Greek Concept of the ‘Seven Stages of Life’ and Its New Testament Significance.” For the origin of Shakespeare’s life stages, see T. W. Baldwin (1944), William Shakespeare’s Small Latine and Lesse Greeke.
3. Islamic teachings: For a summary of Islam’s seven stages of existence, see www.pressreader.com/nigeria/thisday/20201204/281977495192204.
4. Buddhist teachings illustrate the ten stages along the path to enlightenment: See Pia Tan (2004), “The Taming of the Bull.”
5. Hinduism identifies four stages of life: See Pradeep Chakkarath (2013), “Indian Thoughts on Psychological Human Development.”
6. Erik and Joan Erikson, framed adult development as a series of key challenges: These ideas were introduced in a series of publications including the following books: Erik Erikson (1950), Childhood and Society; Erik Erikson (1959), Identity and The Life Cycle; and Erik Erikson and Joan M. Erikson (1997), The Life Cycle Completed: Extended Version.
7. Bernice Neugarten… timing of the events in our lives: See the 1976 article by Bernice Neugarten, “Adaptation and the Life Cycle.”
8. Many who identify as LGBTQ+ experience themselves as “off-time”: See Sara Jaffe (2018), “Queer Time.”
9. vast literature available on the human life cycle: In addition to the work by Joan and Erik Erikson and by Bernice Neugarten cited above, here is a small selection of books and articles about the life cycle: Gail Sheehy (1996), New Passages: Mapping Your Life Across Time; David Levinson (1996), The Seasons of a Woman’s Life; George Vaillant (2002), Aging Well; and Paul B. Baltes (1997), “On the Incomplete Architecture of Human Ontogeny.”
10. Richard Bromfield captured the feeling of loving a teenager well: Bromfield metaphor of tightropes and the quote that follows comes from his 1992 book, Playing for Real, pp. 180–81.
11. Anthony Wolf’s popular parenting book: See Wolf’s 2002 book, Get Out of My Life, but First Could You Drive Me and Cheryl to the Mall?
12. advantages for adolescents who become more autonomous: See the 1994 article by Joseph Allen and colleagues, “Longitudinal Assessment of Autonomy and Relatedness in Adolescent-Family Interactions as Predictors of Adolescent Ego Development and Self-Esteem.”
13. One participant in the Student Council Study: This quotation was included in Rachel Dunaway Cox’s 1970 book about the Student Council Study, Youth into Maturity, p. 231.
14. that standard joke of Mark Twain’s: This participant is referring to a story, often attributed to Mark Twain, that goes like this: “When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.”
15. Jeffrey Arnett has labeled: Jeffrey Arnett (2000), “Emerging Adulthood: A Theory of Development from the Late Teens Through the Twenties.”
16. In 2015, one third of U.S. adults aged 18–34 lived with their parents… 2.2 million young adults, were neither attending school nor working: Jonathan Vespa (2017), “The Changing Economics and Demographics of Young Adulthood, 1975–2016.”
17. In a study done in 2003… participants… were shown two advertisements: Helene H. Fung and Laura L. Carstensen (2003), “Sending Memorable Messages to the Old: Age Differences in Preferences and Memory for Advertisements.”
18. If we think we have less time, we try to appreciate the present: These ideas have been articulated by Laura Carstensen as part of her Socioemotional Selectivity Theory, and in her research she has produced much of the evidence that supports them. See, for example, Laura Carstensen and colleagues (1999), “Taking Time Seriously: A Theory of Socioemotional Selectivity.” Also: Carstensen (2006), “The Influence of a Sense of Time on Human Development.”
19. human beings are never so happy as in the late years of their lives: See Carstensen (1999), “Taking Time Seriously.”
20. it’s these unexpected turns… that most define a person’s life: See Albert Bandura (1982), “The Psychology of Chance Encounters and Life Paths.”
21. This echoes findings from… the Dunedin Study: See the article by A. Caspi and T. E. Moffitt (1995), “The Continuity of Maladaptive Behavior: From Description to Understanding in the Study of Antisocial Behavior.”

Chapter 4: Social Fitness: Keeping Your Relationships in Good Shape

1. “A sad soul can kill you quicker”: This quote comes from Steinbeck’s 1962 book, Travels with Charley: In Search of America, p. 38.
2. Janice Kiecolt-Glaser, was investigating psychological stress: Kiecolt-Glaser is one of the world’s foremost experts on the effect of stress on the immune system. She discusses her research and her personal experience with caregiving stress in a 2016 WexMed talk found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjUW2YClOYM. The research on caregivers and wound healing is published in a 1995 article by Kiecolt-Glaser and colleagues, “Slowing of Wound Healing by Psychological Stress.”
3. When you’re lonely, it hurts: Two scholarly reviews of the impact of loneliness are those by Louise Hawkley and John Cacioppo in 2010, “Loneliness Matters: A Theoretical and Empirical Review of Consequences and Mechanisms,” and by Cacioppo and Cacioppo in 2012, “The Phenotype of Loneliness.” John Cacioppo and William Patrick (2008) have written a book about loneliness for a more general audience—Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection—that summarizes relevant research.
4. Loneliness is associated with:

   Suppression of the immune system: S. D. Pressman and colleagues (2005), “Loneliness, Social Network Size, and Immune Response to Influenza Vaccination in College Freshmen.”

   Less effective sleep: Sarah C. Griffin, and colleagues (2020), “Loneliness and Sleep: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.”

   Diminished brain function: Aparna Shankar and colleagues (2013), “Social Isolation and Loneliness: Relationships with Cognitive Function During 4 Years of Follow-up in the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing.”

5. loneliness is twice as unhealthy as obesity: Holt-Lunstad and colleagues (2010), “Social Relationships and Mortality Risk: A Meta-analytic Review.”
6. chronic loneliness increases a person’s odds of death… 26 percent: Holt-Lunstad and colleagues (2015), “Loneliness and Social Isolation as Risk Factors for Mortality: A Meta-Analytic Review.”
7. study in the U.K.… connections between loneliness and poorer health… in young adults: Timothy Matthews and colleagues (2019), “Lonely Young Adults in Modern Britain: Findings from an Epidemiological Cohort Study.”
8. In a study conducted online… one out of every three people… feel lonely: This study, known as the BBC Loneliness Experiment, is summarized by Claudia Hammond, “Who Feels Lonely? The Results of the World’s Largest Loneliness Study,” BBC Radio 4, May 2018, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/2yzhfv4DvqVp5nZyxBD8G23/who-feels-lonely-the-results-of-the-world-s-largest-loneliness-study. A scholarly article on this study’s key findings can be found here: Manuela Barreto and colleagues (2021), “Loneliness Around the World: Age, Gender, and Cultural Differences in Loneliness.” The findings from this study also suggest that loneliness is more prevalent in societies with more individualistic (rather than collectivistic) values and that men are more likely to experience loneliness. These findings are summarized in a 2018 article by Matthews and colleagues. It is important, of course, to note that these correlational findings could also indicate that poorer coping strategies, mental health problems, and risky physical health behaviors contribute to loneliness. It is likely that causal processes operate in both directions.
9. the economic cost of this loneliness: Karen Jeffrey and colleagues (2017), “The Cost of Loneliness to UK Employers.”
10. In Japan, 32 percent of adults… expected to feel lonely: IPSOS (March 2020), “2020 Predictions, Perceptions and Expectations,” p. 39.
11. In the United States, a 2018 study suggested… moderate to high levels of loneliness: Ellen Lee and colleagues (2019), “High Prevalence and Adverse Health Effects of Loneliness in Community-Dwelling Adults Across the Lifespan: Role of Wisdom as a Protective Factor.”
12. In 2020 it was estimated that 162,000 deaths… social isolation: Dilip Jeste and colleagues (2020), “Battling the Modern Behavioral Epidemic of Loneliness: Suggestions for Research and Interventions.”
13. When we feel isolated, our bodies… help us survive that isolation: A summary of evolutionary influences to be social can be found in John Cacioppo and colleagues (2014), “Evolutionary Mechanisms for Loneliness.”
14. How does this add up for the coming years?: An effective dramatization of this calculation can be found in a 2018 advertisement for a Spanish liqueur: “Ruavieja Commercial 2018 (English subs): #WeHaveToSeeMoreOfEachOther,” Ruavieja, November 20, 2018.
15. average American spent… eleven hours every day interacting with media: Nielsen Report (2018), “Q1 2018 Total Audience Report.”
16. In 2008 we telephoned the wives and husbands of Harvard Study couples: See Waldinger and Schulz (2010), “What’s Love Got to Do with It? Social Functioning, Perceived Health, and Daily Happiness in Married Octogenarians.”
17. You can’t make old friends: “You Can’t Make Old Friends,” track 1, on Kenny Rogers, You Can’t Make Old Friends, Warner Music Nashville, 2013.
18. The proportion of people… who never marry has increased: These figures come from a report by Wendy Wang (2020) that uses U.S. Census and national survey data: “More Than One-Third of Prime-Age Americans Have Never Married.”
19. field of research that studies human motivation: For a discussion of this research, see Kou Murayama (2018), “The Science of Motivation.”
20. “We are self-centered and selfish… this will take time”: The Dalai Lama at the American Enterprise Institute conference, “Economics, Happiness, and the Search for a Better Life,” February 2014.
21. Being generous… make us more likely to help others in the future: Soyoung Q. Park and colleagues (2017), “A Neural Link Between Generosity and Happiness.”
22. A positive, trusting relationship with a spouse can make a… person feel more secure: For relevant research, see work by Nickola Overall and Jeffrey Simpson (2014), “Attachment and Dyadic Regulation Processes”; Deborah Cohen and colleagues (1992), “Working Models of Childhood Attachment and Couple Relationships”; and M. Kumashiro and B. Arriaga (2020), “Attachment Security Enhancement Model: Bolstering Attachment Security Through Close Relationships.”
23. Every man I meet is my master in some point: Ralph Waldo Emerson (1876), Letters and Social Aims, p. 280.

Chapter 5: Attention to Relationships: Your Best Investment

1. “The only gift is a portion of thyself”: This quotation comes from Emerson’s essay on gifts and can be found in the Great Books online version created by Bartleby.com of the Harvard Classics edition of Essays and English Traits by Emerson (1844) on p. 2.
2. Harvard Study Second Generation Questionnaire, 2015: These questions are taken from the Short Form of the Five Facets of Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ-SF) created by Ernst Thomas Bohmeijer and colleagues (2011), “Psychometric Properties of the Five-Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire in Depressed Adults and Development of a Short Form.”
3. “Attention is the rarest”: See Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace (2002).
4. “Attention… is the most basic form of love”: See John Tarrant, The Light Inside the Dark, 1998.
5. those of us who feel time-poor are more stressed and less healthy: Ashley V. Whillans and colleagues (2017), “Buying Time Promotes Happiness.” See also an article intended for a more general audience about time pressure and unhappiness by Ashley Whillans, (2019), “Time Poor and Unhappy.”
6. Globally, average work hours have declined: Charlie Giattino and colleagues (2013), “Working Hours.” See also Derek Thompson (2014), “The Myth That Americans Are Busier Than Ever.”
7. caveats about who is working more, who is working less: Magali Rheault (2011), “In U.S., 3 in 10 Working Adults Are Strapped for Time.”
8. we still feel that our time is stretched to the max: For more on the subjective nature of our experience of free time, see M. A. Sharif and colleagues (2021), “Having Too Little or Too Much Time Is Linked to Lower Subjective Well-being.” They found that the amount of free time we have is not the only important factor: what we do with that time is also very important.
9. In a 2010 study, Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert: See Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel T. Gilbert (2010), “A Wandering Mind Is an Unhappy Mind.”
10. Switching from one task to another takes energy and a measurable amount of time: Timothy J. Buschman and colleagues (2011), “Neural Substrates of Cognitive Capacity Limitations.”
11. “continuous partial attention”: James Fallows (2013), “Linda Stone on Maintaining Focus in a Maddeningly Distractive World.”
12. Attention… equally valuable no matter what era a person lives in: For a discussion of past worries about technological progress, see A. Orben (2020), “The Sisyphean Cycle of Technology Panics.”
13. when social media is used to sustain relationships… connectedness and belonging: Philippe Verduyn and colleagues (2017), “Do Social Network Sites Enhance or Undermine Subjective Well-being? A Critical Review.”
14. As data from our own Harvard Study (and many others)… how they developed as children: Two examples from our own research showing links between childhood relationship experiences and later relationship functioning: Robert J. Waldinger and Marc S. Schulz (2016), “The Long Reach of Nurturing Family Environments: Links with Midlife Emotion-Regulatory Styles and Late-Life Security in Intimate Relationships”; and Sarah W. Whitton and colleagues (2008), “Prospective Associations from Family-of-Origin Interactions to Adult Marital Interactions and Relationship Adjustment.”
15. we can’t assume that online spaces… skills they can also develop online: This is a rapidly expanding area of research. See, for example, additional relevant work by Kate Petrova and Marc Schulz (2022), “Emotional Experiences in Digitally Mediated and In-Person Interactions: An Experience-Sampling Study”; Tatiana A. Vlahovic and colleagues (2012), “Effects of Duration and Laughter on Subjective Happiness Within Different Modes of Communication”; Donghee Y. Wohn and Robert LaRose (2014), “Effects of Loneliness and Differential Usage of Facebook on College Adjustment of First-Year Students”; and Verduyn and colleagues (2017), “Do Social Network Sites Enhance or Undermine Subjective Well-being? A Critical Review.”
16. In nursing homes where social media… social isolation… official cause of death: Christopher Magan (2020), “Isolated During the Pandemic Seniors Are Dying of Loneliness and Their Families Are Demanding Help.”
17. Despite our virtual connectedness… loneliness worsened: For discussions of how the Covid pandemic affected loneliness and mental health, see Tzung-Jeng Hwang and colleagues (2020), “Loneliness and Social Isolation During the COVID-19 Pandemic”; Mark E. Czeisler and colleagues (2020), “Mental Health, Substance Use, and Suicidal Ideation During the COVID-19 Pandemic”; William D. S. Killgore and colleagues (2020), “Loneliness: A Signature Mental Health Concern in the Era of COVID-19”; and Christopher J. Cronin and William N. Evans (2021), “Excess Mortality from COVID and Non-COVID Causes in Minority Populations.” Despite the broad effects of lockdowns, trends in loneliness across the entire pandemic are complicated and studies are not fully consistent. For example, one prominent review suggests that loneliness did not increase globally (on average) during the first year of the pandemic: L. Aknin and colleagues (2021), “Mental Health During the First Year of the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Review and Recommendations for Moving Forward.”
18. How an individual uses these platforms matters: For a discussion of this research, see Verduyn and colleagues (2015), “Passive Facebook Usage Undermines Affective Well-being: Experimental and Longitudinal Evidence”; and also Ethan Kross and colleagues (2013), “Facebook Use Predicts Declines in Subjective Well-Being in Young Adults.”
19. those who use Facebook passively: P. Verduyn and colleagues (2015), “Passive Facebook Usage Undermines Affective Well-being: Experimental and Longitudinal Evidence.”
20. A similar conclusion was reached in a study in Norway: Michael Birkjaer and Micah Kaats (2019), “Does Social Media Really Pose a Threat to Young People’s Well-being?”
21. those who compare themselves to others… are less happy: See relevant work by Verduyn and colleagues (2015), “Passive Facebook Usage Undermines Affective Well-being: Experimental and Longitudinal Evidence”; and research by Ursula Oberst and colleagues (2015) studying over 1,400 adolescents in Latin America: “Negative Consequences from Heavy Social Networking in Adolescents: The Mediating Role of Fear of Missing Out.”
22. Are your online habits affecting them?: Elyssa M. Barrick and colleagues (2020), “The Unexpected Social Consequences of Diverting Attention to Our Phones.”
23. The present moment is the only time over which we have dominion: This quote appears on page 74 of Thich Nhat Hanh’s (2016) book, The Miracle of Mindfulness.
24. a large number of medical schools now offer mindfulness training: Laura Buchholz (2015), “Exploring the Promise of Mindfulness as Medicine.”
25. “the awareness that emerges… things as they are”: J. M. Williams and colleagues (2007), The Mindful Way Through Depression.
26. Even the U.S. military is invested in mindfulness: See Anthony P. Zanesco and colleagues (2019), “Mindfulness Training as Cognitive Training in High-Demand Cohorts: An Initial Study in Elite Military Servicemembers.” See also Amishi Jha and colleagues (2019), “Deploying Mindfulness to Gain Cognitive Advantage: Considerations for Military Effectiveness and Well-being.”
27. designed a study to help work this out… diverse backgrounds: In this study (Cohen and colleagues, 2012), half of the couples were formally married and the others were in long-term committed relationships. Thirty-one percent had a high school education or less, 29 percent were people of color. See Shiri Cohen and colleagues (2012), “Eye of the Beholder: The Individual and Dyadic Contributions of Empathic Accuracy and Perceived Empathic Effort to Relationship Satisfaction.”

Chapter 6: Facing the Music: Adapting to Challenges in Your Relationships

1. “There is a crack, a crack in everything”: This lyric is from Leonard Cohen, the musician and poet. It can be found on Cohen’s (1992) Anthem, track 5, on Leonard Cohen, The Future album. Cohen’s lyric has many precursors, and probably originates with Ralph Waldo Emerson: “There is a crack in every thing God has made,” from Essays, p. 88.
2. “There are two pillars of happiness… does not push love away”: George Vaillant, Triumphs of Experience, p. 50.
3. Many studies have shown that when we avoid confronting challenges… it can get worse: Two examples of relevant research are Shelly L. Gable (2006), “Approach and Avoidance Social Motives and Goals”; and E. A. Impett and colleagues (2010), “Moving Toward More Perfect Unions.”
4. we used data from the Harvard Study and asked… face difficulties directly: We describe this research in Waldinger and Schulz (2010), “Facing the Music or Burying our Heads in the Sand,” along with other relevant research.
5. there are advantages to being flexible: Richard S. Lazarus (1991), Emotion and Adaptation, provided a compelling and influential argument that all efforts at responding to challenges must be matched to the demands of the situation. George Bonanno’s research and ideas have also spoken eloquently to the advantages of responding to challenges in flexible ways. See, for example, Bonanno and Burton (2013) and Bonanno and colleagues (2004). Building on Lazarus’s and Bonanno’s ideas, we (Dworkin and colleagues, 2019) have provided evidence linking flexible coping when discussing relationship challenges with relationship satisfaction.
6. the connection between how we perceive events and how we feel about them: For a more thorough discussion of this idea, see Lazarus (1991) and Moors and colleagues (2013).
7. “Men are disturbed not by events, but by the views they take of them”: This quotation from Epictetus was written in AD 135 in the Enchiridion. Elizabeth Carter (http://classics.mit.edu/Epictetus/epicench.html) offers a slightly different translation: “Men are disturbed, not by things, but by the principles and notions which they form concerning things.”
8. “Monks,” the Buddha said: This quote is attributed to the Buddhist scripture Samyutta Nikaya, in Anne Bancroft’s 2017 (p. 7) The Wisdom of the Buddha: Heart Teachings in His Own Words.
9. The W.I.S.E.R Model of Reacting: The model we present builds on existing models of emotion and coping with challenges including important work by Lazarus and Folkman (1984) and Crick and Dodge (1994).
10. Emotion is usually a sign that there is something important going on: This idea comes from several influential theories of emotion, including Lazarus’s (1991) seminal work. See also Schulz and Lazarus (2012) for a summary of these ideas.
11. “The world we live in”: See Shohaku Okumura, Realizing Genjokoan: The Key to Dogen’s Shobogenzo.
12. self-distanced reflection can shed new light on old stories: The benefits of self-distancing have been explored in a number of research studies by Ethan Kross and Ozlem Aduk. See, for example, Kross’s (2021) book, Chatter, and a summary of relevant research in Kross, Ayduk, and Mischel (2005).
13. “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities”: This quote comes from Shunryu Suzuki’s 2010 book, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind (p. 1).
14. The men who fought in the war talked about the bonds they formed: See 2017 article by Michael Nevarez, Hannah Yee, and Robert Waldinger.
15. many talked about how important it was to be able to share at least part of their experiences: See thesis work by Someshwar (2018).

Chapter 7: The Person Beside You: How Intimate Relationships Shape Our Lives

1. “When we were children”: Madeleine L’Engle, Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art (New York: Convergent, 1980), pp. 182–83.
2. In Plato’s Symposium, Aristophanes gives a speech: Plato, The Symposium, trans. Christopher Gill (London: Penguin, 1999), pp. 22–24.
3. the variety of committed relationships is increasing: These figures are drawn from Joseph Chamie (2021), “The End of Marriage in America?” and Kim Parker and colleagues (2019), “Marriage and Cohabitation in the U.S.”
4. We talked of castles and kings, of cabbages: It seems James and Maryanne shared an affinity for Lewis Carroll:

   “The time has come,” the Walrus said,

   “To talk of many things:

   Of shoes—and ships—and sealing wax—

   Of cabbages—and kings—

   And why the sea is boiling hot—

   And whether pigs have wings.”

   —“The Walrus and the Carpenter”

5. Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, pp. 73–74.
6. when a securely attached child seeks her caregiver… psychological benefits: For relevant research, see studies by Hills-Soderlund and colleagues (2008), Spangler and colleagues (1998), and Order and colleagues (2020)
7. Study participants’ relationships were affecting their bodies in real time: James Coan presented this research in a 2013 TEDx Talk, “Why We Hold Hands,” in Charlottesville, Virginia. This research is reported in Coan and Colleagues (2006).
8. The mere thought of a person who is important to us can generate chemicals… other body systems: Research supporting this conclusion comes from a variety of sources including basic research linking thinking to emotions and emotional arousal (e.g., Smith, 1989). Also see work by Krause and colleagues (2016) linking physiological reactions in mothers to thinking about individuals in interpersonal contexts.
9. emotions are a signal that there are matters of significance to us at play: See Lazarus (1991).
10. We investigated the link between emotion and relationship stability: Research summarized in Waldinger and colleagues (2004).
11. The fact that raters with no special knowledge of psychology… most adults have a facility to accurately read emotions: In this study, we also compared combined aggregates of our “naive” raters to expert emotion coders and found a very high correspondence between the ratings from these two sources.
12. A Fear of Differences: Most of the relevant research and thinking about the role of differences in causing strong emotions in couples comes from work on couples therapy. See, for example, work by Sue Johnson (2013), Daniel Wile (2008), and Schulz, Cowan, and Cowan (2006).
13. a key lesson of the Harvard Study… relationships (and especially intimate relationships) play a crucial role in how satisfied we are at any particular moment in life: For a discussion of the connection between relationship satisfaction and overall satisfaction in life over time, see McAdams and colleagues (2012) article from the longitudinal study, the British Household Panel Survey.
14. Life changes of all kinds can cause stress in our intimate partnerships. Even positive changes: In 1967, Thomas Holmes and Richard Rahe developed a scale to measure the stress associated with life changes. It included events like getting married, starting a new job, becoming pregnant, experiencing the death of a close friend, and retirement. They gave each event a score of “life change units” from 0–100, and they found that people with higher total life change scores had more physical illness. This scale has been used across many cultures and in a number of different populations, and it’s proven useful over the years. The remarkable thing is that the scale is not based on how “negative” or “positive” an event is, but rather on the amount of change it causes.
15. Many studies, including our own, show that there is often a decline in relationship satisfaction after the birth of a child: See, for example, Schulz, Cowan, and Cowan (2006).
16. There is no remedy for love but to love more: This quote comes from Thoreau’s Journal I, page 88 (July 25, 1839).
17. technique that shares much in common with mindfulness… research showing its utility: See, for example, Kross (2021) and Kross and Ayduk (2017). For research connecting self-distancing and mindfulness, see Petrova and colleagues (2021).

Chapter 8: Family Matters

1. “Call it a clan”: This quotation comes from Jane Howard’s 1998 book, Families (p. 234).
2. Lowell Street (now Lomasney Way): See Levesque, “The West End Through Time.” Many of our participants’ neighborhoods in the West End and other areas of Boston were bulldozed during the period of urban renewal that began in the 1950s, and no longer resemble the places they once were. See the following for a good description of changes in the West End across time: http://web.mit.edu/aml2010/www/throughtime.html.
3. ongoing debate in the field of psychology. Some believe that early family experience determines who we become: Sigmund Freud and many of his psychoanalytic followers famously emphasized the role of early childhood experiences in shaping adult personality and functioning. A 1998 book by Judith Rich Harris (The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn out the Way They Do) ignited a public debate about the degree to which early childhood environments shape later functioning by claiming that most of this connection between early childhood environments and later functioning can be accounted for by genetic influences. Advocates on both sides of this issue continue to debate this issue.
4. “No man is an island”: This quotation from John Donne can be found on pp. 108–9 of Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions: Together with Death’s Duel.
5. In ancient China, the idea of family… this model remains strong in China today: See, for example, Huang and Gove (2012).
6. “Ballroom culture”: Marlon M. Bailey, Butch Queens Up in Pumps.
7. “In general… society at large”: Marlon M. Bailey, Butch Queens Up in Pumps, p. 5.
8. Regardless of our current lives, we still carry the ghosts of our childhoods: Selma Fraiberg, an American psychoanalyst and social worker, wrote an influential (1975) article, entitled “Ghosts in the Nursery,” about the influence of childhood legacies.
9. In 1955, a developmental psychologist named Emmy Werner: Emmy Werner and Ruth S. Smith summarize this research in two books, Overcoming the Odds: High Risk Children from Birth to Adulthood (1992); and Journeys from Childhood to Midlife: Risk, Resilience, and Recovery (2001).
10. “[The participants] were children and grandchildren of immigrants… a small group of Anglo-Saxon Caucasians”: Emmy E. Werner and Ruth S. Smith, “An Epidemiologic Perspective on Some Antecedents and Consequences of Childhood Mental Health Problems and Learning Disabilities (A Report from the Kauai Longitudinal Study),” p. 293.
11. Werner didn’t select just a few participants… study lasted for over thirty years: Study summarized in Werner (1993).
12. One third of all children who had adverse childhoods… well-adjusted adults: Werner and Smith (1979).
13. Harvard Study participants who were able to acknowledge challenges… similar ability to elicit support from others: Evidence for the benefits associated with acknowledging challenges and talking about them is provided in Waldinger and Schulz (2016).
14. Any excuse to gather the family together… lower rates of substance abuse, teen pregnancy, and depression: These findings are summarized in Anne Fishel (2016), “Harnessing the Power of Family Dinners to Create Change in Family Therapy.”
15. adults in the U.S. eating about half of their meals alone: Reported by Ellen Byron (2019), “The Pleasures of Eating Alone.”
16. Family stories are important for bonding and maintaining connections: Barbara Fiese discusses the value of family storytelling and other rituals in a 2006 book, Family Routines and Rituals, and in a 2002 article written with colleagues.

Chapter 9: The Good Life at Work: Investing in Connections

1. “Judge each day”: The origins of this quote are disputed. It is often attributed to the nineteenth-century Robert Louis Stevenson, but it more likely came a bit later from William Arthur Ward. Stevenson’s version is often quoted as, “Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.” See the following for a discussion of the origin of this quote: quoteinvestigator.com/2021/06/23/seeds/#note-439819-1.
2. On average, workers in the United Kingdom do not work the most hours… (belongs to Germany): Charlie Giattino and colleagues (2013), “Working Hours.”
3. By the time the average individual in the U.K. reaches 80 years of age… (13 years!) at work: Time-use surveys have been completed in many countries. In the U.S. the Bureau of Labor Statistics regularly measures the amount of time people spend on various activities as part of their American Time Use Survey (ATUS). These time-use surveys are often used as raw data for calculating estimates of total time spent in activities across the lifespan. These estimates vary depending on the exact data used and the method employed for projections. The illustration we used comes from a post by Gemma Curtis in 2017 (and last modified in April 2021).
4. 63 percent of all Americans age 16 and over are part of the paid labor force: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (retrieved October 2021), data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000.
5. He conducted a study to try to quantify the effects of a difficult workday: This study is summarized in Schulz and colleagues (2004), “Coming Home Upset: Gender, Marital Satisfaction and the Daily Spillover of Workday Experience into Marriage.”
6. trying to ignore the emotions or hide them… often increases their intensity and our body’s arousal: James Gross and colleagues have conducted important research studying the impact on the body of hiding emotions from others. See, for example, Gross and Levenson (1993) and Gross (2002). The research indicates that when individuals actively try to hide emotion from others their cardiovascular system shows signs of arousal and they sweat more (another sign of internal physiological arousal). There is other research (e.g., Hayes and colleagues, 2004) indicating that repeated attempts to ignore or avoid strong negative emotions often result in increases in those emotions and related difficulties.
7. It’s inevitable that we will have hard days at work: Some people, because of their social or economic status, may have a greater vulnerability to the spillover of negative effects from work to well-being. A 2020 study by Rung and colleagues in Louisiana, for example, suggests that Black women may be particularly vulnerable to spillover of work into family life.
8. The North End was a heavily Italian neighborhood: For a history of the Italian immigrant experience in Boston, see Stephen Puleo (2007), The Boston Italians.
9. loneliness increases our risk of death as much as smoking or obesity: See conclusions in meta-analytic review by Julianne Holt-Lunstad and colleagues in 2010.
10. Gallup has conducted workplace engagement polls… Do you have a best friend at work?: Annamarie Mann (2018), “Why We Need Best Friends at Work.”
11. people who have a best friend at work are more engaged: See findings reported by Annamarie Mann (2018) for Gallup and a 1995 study by Christine Riordan and Rodger Griffeth examining links between friendship opportunities and job satisfaction and engagement.
12. Positive relationships at work lead to lower stress levels… make us happier: See Mann (2018), article by Adam Grant (2015) in The New York Times, and Riordan and Griffeth’s 1995 study.
13. Mary Ainsworth… had her own encounters with sexism in the workplace: Mary Ainsworth wrote about these and other life experiences in a chapter in Agnes N. O’Connell and Nancy Felipe Russo, eds. (1983), Models of Achievement: Reflections of Eminent Women in Psychology.
14. women’s roles in the workforce have changed… roles in the home: These trends are documented in Arlie Hochschild’s (1989/2012) book, The Second Shift. See also the 2000 review by Scott Coltrane documenting similar trends and inequities.
15. time burdens in the home still weigh more heavily on the woman: See, for example, work by Bianchi and colleagues in 2012.
16. On the northeast outskirts of Philadelphia… is a large plot of land… now being converted into a UPS sorting center: Inga Saffron (2021), “Our Desire for Quick Delivery Is Bringing More Warehouses to Our Neighborhoods.” Additional documentation of these changes can be found at these sites: https://www.inquirer.com/philly/blogs/inq-phillydeals/ne-phila-ex-budd-site-sold-for-18m-to-cdc-for-warehouses-20180308.html; https://www.workshopoftheworld.com/northeast/budd.html; and https://philadelphianeighborhoods.com/2019/10/16/northeast-residents-look-to-city-for-answers-about-budd-site-development/.
17. work is a major source of socializing and connection: See Adam Grant (2015), “Friends at Work? Not So Much.”
18. We became isolated from our workmates, customers, and colleagues: See 2020 report by Philip Armour and colleagues for the RAND Corporation.
19. More technological development is inevitable: For more on the changing nature of certain kinds of work and its implications, see “The IWG Global Workspace Survey” (2019).

Chapter 10: All Friends Have Benefits

1. “My friends are my ‘estate’ ”: Emily Dickinson wrote this is an 1858 letter to Samuel Bowles.
2. Ananda, one of the Buddha’s disciples: This quote is from the Upaddha Sutta in the Samyutta Nikaya XLV.2, a translation of which can be accessed here: http://www.buddhismtoday.com/english/texts/samyutta/sn45-2.html.
3. “Without friends”: Aristotle wrote this at the beginning of an essay about friendships in the Nicomachean Ethics (Book VIII) in 350 BCE.
4. Seneca wrote… “follow into exile”: This quote by Seneca can be found in his Letters from a Stoic.
5. 2010 review… 148 studies… the effect that social connections have on health and longevity: See 2010 article by Holt-Lunstad and colleagues in PLOS Medicine (previously discussed in chapter 2).
6. A large longitudinal study in Australia… strongest network of friends: See 2004 article by L.C. Giles and colleagues, “Effects of Social Networks on 10 Year Survival in Very Old Australians: The Australian Longitudinal Study of Aging.”
7. study of 2,835 nurses with breast cancer… no close friends: See 2006 article by Candyce Kroenke and colleagues, “Social Networks, Social Support, and Survival After Breast Cancer Diagnosis.”
8. A longitudinal study of over 17,000… decreased the risk of dying: These results are reported in a 1987 article by Kristina Orth-Gomer and J.V. Johnson, “Social Network Interaction and Mortality. A Six Year Follow-up Study of a Random Sample of the Swedish Population.”
9. “Secret sharing or talking intimately… sharing secrets”: This quote comes from a 2013 article (p. 202) by Niobe Way, “Boys’ Friendships During Adolescence: Intimacy, Desire, and Loss.”
10. gender differences… are smaller than one might expect given our cultural assumptions: See, for example, Jeffrey Hall’s 2011 review and meta-analysis of gender differences in expectations for friendships across thirty-six separate samples with a total of 8,825 individuals. This meta-analysis found that gender differences in expectations for friendships across studies are typically of small magnitude, which means that men and women overlap significantly more in their expectations than they diverge. For example, female participants, on average, expected slightly more out of their friendships than male participants, but the difference was small enough that the distributions for men and women overlap more than 85 percent.
11. In one fascinating study… having a friendly moment with a stranger was uplifting: These findings come from a 2014 study by Gillian M. Sandstrom and Elizabeth U. Dunn, “Is Efficiency Overrated?: Minimal Social Interactions Lead to Belonging and Positive Affect.”
12. repeated casual contact has been shown to foster the formation of closer friendships: Jeffrey Hall (2019), “How Many Hours Does It Take to Make a Friend?” presents research on how repeated contact is connected to friendship.
13. Mark Granovetter has done important research: Granovetter’s classic article on weak ties is “The Strength of Weak Ties” (1973).
14. “Listening is a magnetic and strange thing”: Brenda Ueland, “Tell Me More.”

Conclusion: It’s Never Too Late to Be Happy

1. The typical longitudinal study has a much higher dropout rate… entire lifetimes: In a 2012 study, Kristin Gustavson and colleagues discuss attrition in longitudinal studies.
2. Courses in social and emotional learning (SEL)… are being tested in schools all over the world: Rebecca Taylor and colleagues review Socio-Emotional Learning interventions in a 2017 meta-analysis. Hoffman and colleagues discuss a leading example of SEL interventions in a 2020 article.
3. Efforts to bring these same lessons to adults in organizations, workplaces, and community centers are also under way: We (Bob and Marc) are involved in efforts to promote this kind of learning with adults through our involvement with the Lifespan Research Foundation (https://www.lifespanresearch.org/). Building on the research cited in this book we have created two 5-session courses designed to help individuals lead happier and more satisfying lives. The “Road Maps for Life Transitions” course (https://www.lifespanresearch.org/course-for-individuals/) is designed for adults at all stages of life, while the “Next Chapter” course (https://www.lifespanresearch.org/next-chapter/) is especially designed for individuals between ages 50 and 70.