It was novel at the time. Research began at Harvard in pre-WWII, depression-era 1938 to figure out not what makes people sick or go off the rails, but instead, what helps us thrive. The Harvard Study of Human Development amassed gobs of data across two centuries that uncovered the single most important contributor to our health and happiness: good relationships. More than exercise, diet, work, genes, success, money, or anything else.

Former director of the Harvard Study, George Valiant put it like this, “There are two pillars of happiness revealed by the Harvard Study. One is love. The other is finding a way of coping with life that does not push love away.” That second part is important. All lives have difficulty and loss. Keeping our troubles to ourselves — which might seem unselfish — is not only misguided, it’s unhealthy. Others need us to need them, and we need others.

Still going strong today, the longest scientific study of people’s lives began as two independent efforts following over 700 boys. One included Harvard sophomores, the other, 14-year-old boys from disadvantaged and troubled families in Boston. Long since merged into one study and expanded to spouses and children, the findings have also been confirmed by other longitudinal studies. The Good Life: Lessons From the World’s Largest Scientific Study of Happiness, by Robert Waldinger, director, and Marc Schultz, associate director of the Harvard Study, highlights the findings and offers tips and tools for maintaining what they call “social fitness.”

Why love?

Waldinger offers, “What we think is that relationships are stress regulators. Chronic stress, as we know, is a big problem . . . it has numerous health hazards. And what we find is that good relationships are stress relievers.“

Malcolm Gladwell’s inclusion of Roseto in Outliers captures how powerful this stress relief theory is. In the late 1950s, when heart disease was ravaging the nation — the #1 cause of death in men over 65 — men in Roseto, a small town of 2,000 in the foothills of Pennsylvania, showed no sign of heart disease at 55, and were experiencing it at half the national rate at 65. Stewart Wolf, a local physician, discovered this and conducted careful research with sociologist John Bruhn. “There was no suicide, no alcoholism, no drug addiction, and very little crime. They didn’t have anyone on welfare. Then we looked at peptic ulcers. They didn’t have any of those either. These people were basically dying of old age. That’s it,” Bruhn recalled.

Wolf and Bruhn theorized that the phenomenon might be due to Rosetan’s diet, genes, or exercise. It wasn't. They had a lard-based diet, many were obese, they smoked heavily, and didn’t exercise. It wasn’t genes. They even wondered if it was something about the foothills of Eastern Pennsylvania. It wasn’t.

They came to believe that it was Roseto itself. “Rosetans had created a powerful, protective social structure capable of insulating them from the pressures of the modern world.” They visited each other, chatted on the street, three generations often lived under one roof, and there were over 200 community organizations to belong to. And, importantly, Roseto had an “egalitarian ethos that discouraged the wealthy from flaunting their success and helped the unsuccessful obscure their failures.”

Love is in the eye of the beholder

There’s no one-size-fits-most formula for “good relationships.” Extroverts don’t have a leg up on introverts. One person may have a bunch of people in their life, yet feel isolated, lonely, and disconnected. Another might have just a few, but they feel connected and supported and loved. It’s all in our own emotional perception.

That said, one of the important questions in the study underscores the impact of a “go-to” in our lives — those so-called “2-am-ers.” If you’re in crisis at 2am, do you have someone you can call on that you know you can count on?

Love is all around us

Relationships with friends, family, coworkers, neighbors, and especially our life partner all matter. Yet we also get a boost from our “casual” relationships — the person who makes our latte for us at our morning coffee stop, the fellow runners we pass by and exchange a nod and smile with, or that person who stopped to let us into traffic. When we acknowledge, appreciate, and offer kindness to each other, it fills us up.

Love is a verb

The happiest and healthiest in the Harvard Study tended to orient their decisions to others — staying in a family business because they were needed instead of pursuing a law career, and they actively cared for and appreciated the people around them. They believed in something greater than themselves. Not necessarily a religious belief, just something beyond the individual “me.”

They also reported enjoying the questions and interviews, and used them as reflection opportunities, while the unhappiest participants saw no benefit to participating in the study.

Love is ageless

Waldinger and Shultz note that relationships can be started, renewed, and nurtured no matter what stage of life. Some study participants found their first good friends in their 60s and 70s or found romance for the first time in their 80s. In one vignette, joining a gym led to finding like-minded movie buddies that blossomed into deep friendships.

Love is simple

Just a little more time for love can make a big difference — a few more minutes tuning into your partner or kids each day, lunch or coffee with a friend, or a check-in with someone who’s having a hard time. And for those casual humans in our lives, give a smile, a hello, and a hearty thank you, or stop to wave a stranger into the traffic lane. Turns out we get as much, if not more, of a boost from giving than receiving.

Thoughts are welcome