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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.

12 of 108 comments (clear)

  1. Get High! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    And you won't care!

  2. 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. Re:So once again (and again and again)... by aaaaaaargh! · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Yes, but if there is no positive or negative correlation then there is also no causation, and that's what this article is about.

    3. Re:So once again (and again and again)... by Hognoxious · · Score: 4, Funny

      older people who attended church services regularly

      They're cramming for their finals.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  3. i remember the other science advice about lifespan by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

  4. Well this makes me sad by surfdaddy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Hoping I'll live a long and unhappy life.

  5. But unhappiness. . . by Idou · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Will certainly make it seem like your life is longer. . .

    --
    Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
  6. OK world: once and for all.. by rodia · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  7. 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...

  8. Re:i remember the other science advice about lifes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    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?