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As director of the longest-running study on human happiness, Dr. Robert Waldinger has some simple essential advice for feeling good: Make friends, keep friends, treasure friends.
On the afternoon that I called Robert Waldinger about the secret to a happy, healthy life, he was packing for a trip to Japan. That Waldinger — a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, Zen master, and Harvard researcher — had agreed to chat on a Sunday less than 24 hours before a 12-day international trek reveals much about his core kindness and life-changing message: Relationships are vital for us humans. They are vital for good health, for happiness, for a long and fulfilling life. And so Waldinger values his relationships not only with his spouse, his two sons, his coworkers, his friends, and his neighbors, but even with a stranger like me who’s preventing him from packing.
Waldinger’s insights are powered by one of the world’s most unique datasets. He is director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, believed to be the longest study of adult life in human history. The study began in 1938 by following the lives of 268 male Harvard sophomores and 456 boys from some of Boston’s most troubled families and poorest neighborhoods. Decade by decade, year after year, researchers asked about their jobs, their families, their health, and their satisfaction with life. They conducted interviews in their homes, tracked their successes and setbacks, obtained medical records from their doctors. They drew their blood and scanned their brains. In 2005, it was broadened to include their wives, and researchers are now tracking the lives of nearly 2,000 of the participants’ children.
The biggest takeaway from the decades of data is surprisingly simple. “Good relationships,” Waldinger says, “keep us happier and healthier — period.” And yet many Americans, particularly men, are struggling to maintain those close relationships. The percentage of men with at least six close friends plummeted from 55 percent in 1990 to 27 percent in 2021, according to an American Enterprise Institute survey. Fifteen percent had no close friends at all.