Long Live! Ask the Expert: Howard S. Friedman

Co-author of “The Longevity Project”

By Ola Diab
CTW Features

Everybody wants a long, healthy and happy life. But what’s the secret? Common knowledge says don’t stress or worry too much, be happy and positive, exercise regularly and maybe even get married, but what does science say? In 1921, Stanford University psychologist Lewis Terman began a study where he tracked the lives of 1,500 Americans from childhood to death. The two-decade study is now a book called “The Longevity Project” (Hudson, 2011) where Howard S. Friedman and Leslie Martin, researchers and psychology professors at the University of California, Riverside, establish what it is about these 1,500 individuals that led some to stay well and others to fall ill or die early.

“It was especially fascinating to understand that health was not random and that those individuals who became involved with others in a consequential life were improving their own health and longevity as an unanticipated bonus,” Friedman says. “The Longevity Project shows why many people became both happy and healthy by living a good, dedicated, involved life.” Here, Friedman discusses the "secrets" she and her co-author discovered.

The 1,500 people studied for the book were tracked decades ago. How are their health problems still relevant today? Do people still suffer from the same unhealthy practices people suffered from decades ago?

We spent a lot of time looking at the generality of the findings. In the research, we focused on things that are distributed similarly to the general population of Americans today, such as personality traits, key social variables like marriage and divorce, and lots of career and work variables. When needed, we also conducted comparison analyses with valid contemporary measures in contemporary (modern day) samples. The results hold up well and are very relevant. And of course, people still die today from cancer, heart disease, injuries, and so on.

What are these unhealthy practices? How do people change them?

There are self-quizzes and case histories in "The Longevity Project" that you can use to understand your own long-term patterns, and trajectories relevant to health. These focus on your personality and your social interactions. Then, the best way to get yourself on a healthy pathway, one of healthy long-term patterns, is to associate with other healthy, active, involved individuals, especially those relevant to your desired healthy lifestyle. As our examples and studies revealed, each individual needs to understand his or her own life trajectory and engage in the things that fit best for that individual.

In the book, one of the things you discussed to keep people healthy is stress. Many people find that shocking because they’re told to take it easy to live longer. How is stressing and worrying healthy?

Our results clearly showed that those who were highly motivated, worked the hardest, steadily advanced in their careers and achieved the most career success lived the longest. They didn’t work themselves to death, they worked themselves to life. Ambition was not a problem and taking it easy was not healthy. In fact, those who were carefree, undependable,and un-ambitious in childhood, and who were unsuccessful in their careers, had a whopping increase in their mortality risk.

One of the interesting things the book points out about living a long and healthy life is career accomplishments. How does a person approach or choose a career and avoid stressing or shortening his or her own life?

One of the tips we present in "The Longevity Project" (which we both use ourselves) is to welcome new work assignments. That is, rather than thinking “Oh no, more work, I’m stressed” instead think, “Oh good; increased opportunity to accomplish something worthwhile!” And then – here’s the key – start on that task right away. This is not “positive thinking.” Rather, this is a behavioral approach to the workday. You do it knowing that it will bring even more work. We present many examples showing that this is how the long-lived participants lived.

You found behaviors and characteristics in these 1,500 people studied that relate to longevity. What are a few of those behaviors and characteristics? What are the secrets to longevity?

In childhood, each participant’s parents and teachers were asked to rate the child on dozens of trait dimensions. We worked to create a reliable and valid scale of conscientiousness and dependability – whether the child was prudent, conscientious, truthful and free from egotism. Then, in young adulthood, the participants were asked questions like, “Are you thrifty and careful about making loans?” and “How persistent are you in the accomplishment of your ends?” We worked for months to construct and validate a new series of new, reliable personality scales. It was almost as if we had gone back decades and measured Franklin Roosevelt’s personality by finding a modern-day doppelganger. Unexpectedly, in both childhood and adulthood, conscientiousness turned out to be the best personality predictor of long life. This is a strong effect, comparable to the effects of systolic blood pressure or cholesterol on longevity.

And what were a few behaviors and characteristics that were shortening these people’s lives?

Men who got and stayed divorced (or who remarried and divorced again) saw their risk of dying skyrocket. And social isolation was generally very unhealthy.

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