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Study: Happiness Won't Extend Your Life After All (latimes.com)
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.
And you won't care!
... correlation is not causation!
They said I would live longer if I gave up red meat, dessert, exercised every day, and got married.
But then it occurred to me that it probably just seems longer.
Hoping I'll live a long and unhappy life.
Will certainly make it seem like your life is longer. . .
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
This raises an interesting point. If longevity correlates with happiness but is not caused by happiness, then it follows that psychological techniques to increase happiness have no effect - else there would be a measure of causation. People who have successfully become happier using the techniques actually got happier due to other lifestyle changes, which increase both happiness and longevity.
Maybe it means that physical pain is the #1 cause of unhappiness in life.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
So in summary, don't bother trying to change your happiness level by psychological means. If the techniques worked then it would have an effect on one's longevity. Since it doesn't, the conclusion is that the techniques don't work.
I guess happiness is a worthy goal to strive towards quite regardless of whether it lengthens lifespan or not. A shorter but happy life seems preferable to a long and miserable one.
Of course, you could always have the ultimate short life by overdosing on happy pills. But that's just sad....
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
Two things A and B occurring together can have one of these reasons:
1) A is a direct or indirect, exclsive or non-exclusive cause for B.
2) same as 1) with A and B interchanged. I possibly just lost the media croud, but anyway..
3) A and B have a common, direct or indirect, exclusive or non-exclusive, cause C (as in this story).
4) It's just coincidence.
Without further evidence, we just don't know which one it is; and you just jumping to conclusions because you feel like it and then being proven wrong is NOT news.
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.
The balance of proper scientific evidence suggests that giving up red meat would in fact make your life shorter, less healthy, and less happy. Vegetarians are more prone to depression and a range of diseases. See, for example, http://www.fathead-movie.com/i...
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
Not sure I'm buying the results of this study.
I think that happiness (however you define it) translates into a lot of behaviors (or avoidance of certain behaviors) that can influence how long you live, or more importantly, how you live. And how you live does have an effect on how long you live, but it can be hard to quantify the big picture.
If you're unhappy you may choose (consciously or unconsciously) to take more "risky" chances, you may choose to engage in behaviors that have statistically worse outcomes, you may take poorer care of yourself in various ways, and so on.
In other words, I think the study is simplistic and provably meaningless. It doesn't really address the follow-on effects of unhappiness and the attendant outcomes.
If you're trying to draw a straight line between "happiness" and "living a long time", I think that's going to fail, but I do think that being happy gives you a better likelihood of living longer because of the overall effect on your life when viewed in context with your choices and behavior.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
And it's so hard to live on a vegetarian diet. They tend to be awfully stringy and tough to chew. But if you wrap them in enough bacon, who cares?
it's that stress (too much of it, particularly) shortens it.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'