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Study: Happiness Won't Extend Your Life After All (latimes.com)

Posted by samzenpus on from the escaping-the-unbearable-scream-that-is-silence dept.

schwit1 writes with good news for fans of living a long and ultimately unfulfilling life. Happy people live longer, a relationship that's been documented in a variety of research studies. But a new paper published in the medical journal Lancet comes to the sad conclusion that happiness isn't responsible for this observed longevity. Instead, the things that make people happy, particularly their good health, are the same things that shield them from premature death. "Happiness and related measures of well-being do not appear to have any direct effect on mortality," the study authors wrote.

4 of 108 comments (clear)

  1. So once again (and again and again)... by macraig · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ... correlation is not causation!

    1. Re:So once again (and again and again)... by Kjella · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Don't worry in a few years they'll find out that happiness lead to good life choices that lead to good health that lead to you living longer.

      At least I know I'm prone to destructive behavior like binge eating or getting hammered when I'm sad. That's got to have an effect.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  2. Who the heck cares? by prefec2 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If I am happy and die with 50 then that is fine. I would also be happy when I reach 90 and been happy all the time. Longevity is not that important. In the end you are dead and there is no sense in being miserable all your life for 90 years, except you are a poet then this is what you like. So you are at least happy that you are so wonderfully miserable.

    1. Re:Who the heck cares? by naris · · Score: 3, Insightful

      If I am happy and die with 50 then that is fine.

      Get back to us when you are 49 and let us know if you still think this...