What Makes Men Happy?

The Harvard Grant Study is the longest scientific study of male development and adjustment to life. It began in 1938 and is still active today. In his recent book, George Vaillant, who is one of the researchers on the study, discussed some of the surprising findings from the research:

• The most important contributor to joy and success in adult life is love, and the second greatest contributor is the individual’s involuntary coping styles.
• What goes right in childhood predicts the future far better than what goes wrong. A warm childhood predicts joy and success in adult life.
• The capacity for intimate relationships predicts flourishing in all aspects of men’s lives.
• Marriages become happier after age 70.
• Alcoholism was the most important factor in divorces.
• As men approach old age, their boyhood relationships with their mothers were associated with their effectiveness at work, continuing to work until age 70, and late-life income. Men’s warm relationships with their fathers (but not with mothers) seem to enhance their capacity to play. Good father-son relationships predicted subjective life satisfaction at age 75.
• After age 40, IQ does not count for much.
• Men’s military rank once discharged from WWII was significantly correlated with a cohesive home atmosphere in childhood and warm relationships with mother and siblings. Body build, parental social class, endurance on a treadmill, and IQ were not associated with attained military rank in any way.
• Of the 26 personality traits assessed when the men were in college, the one called Practical, Organized best predicted objective mental health at ages 30 through 50.
• Men who live to be 100 years old are usually pretty active at age 95.

When Vaillant was asked what people should do to increase their chances of happiness into old age he offered the following advice:

Some of these findings are surprising and others are common sense. Men would do well to focus on those behaviors they can control and to try to minimize the effects of the involuntary factors. This is where coaching can help as a means of helping people discover what is blocking their progress and developing a life plan.

It may be time for you to build a happier and more productive life.

Sources

Positive Psychology News Daily, May 21, 2013

Harvard University Gazette, June, 2001

Vaillant, G. (2012). Triumphs of Experience: The Men of the Harvard Grant Study. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press.