In largest study of its kind, CU-Boulder researchers find that happiness is its own reward. Why, exactly, this is true remains a mystery.

Some peer-reviewed studies have found that happy people tend to live longer than their less-happy counterparts. 但现在, 第一次, researchers have found that happiness all by itself—regardless of 婚姻状况, 收入, physical health and other indicators—is a key factor in longevity.

“There has been so much focus on what makes people happy,蒂姆·沃兹沃思说, associate professor of sociology at the 博彩平台推荐. “But we asked what are the outcomes of happiness, 在某种意义上, 快乐是它自己的结果.”

这项研究发表在杂志上 社会科学 & 医学 今年秋天. 沃兹沃斯的团队包括伊丽莎白. Lawrence at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and Professor Richard G. Rogers of the CU-Boulder Department of 社会学. The team’s work was based on a far broader sample than previous studies.

Previous studies regarding happiness and longevity have been smaller or more narrowly focused. 经典的“修女研究”,例如:, examined the writings of a few hundred nuns from the time they entered a convent until their deaths.

“That study found that those that wrote stories that were coded as demonstrating a happier disposition tended to live longer. 本研究, 还有其他类似的, were getting at the same argument we are getting at, but they weren’t a nationally representative sample,沃兹沃思说.

Using nationally representative data from the General Social Survey between 1978 and 2002, 这项新研究调查了超过32个,000人, how long they lived and their responses to questions about their happiness and a variety of other characteristics. 像这样, the researchers were able to control for such well-established correlates of both happiness and longevity as education, 婚姻状况, 种族和收入.

The researchers found that the risk of death for unhappy people is 14 percent higher than those who are “pretty happy,” whose risk is 6 percent higher than those described as “very happy.”

“进一步, we found no significant interactions between happiness and the other covariates,他们总结道。. “这是, mortality risk is lower for happy than unhappy individuals, and for married than unmarried individuals, but there is no additional longevity benefit for people who are both happy and married.”

In other words, they found that happiness is a stand-alone indicator of well-being and longer life.

“但这里有一个警告，”瓦德沃思说. “博彩平台推荐真的不知道为什么. We are very confident there is a correlation, but cannot claim this is causal at this point. We can’t claim that happiness guarantees a long life.”

Wadsworth has also been looking into rates of happiness between different ethnic groups in America. African Americans and Asian Americans report much lower levels of happiness than their white counterparts (Hispanics are harder to gauge, 因为他们跨越了种族界限).

But where most of the variation can be explained by socio-economic factors, 亚裔美国人似乎是一个异类, 他说. Even after controlling for a variety of factors Asian Americans still report much lower levels of life satisfaction.

在广泛层面上, a human tendency to compare our circumstances with those of others living around us may provide a clue. 研究发现, 例如, that obesity is more detrimental to life satisfaction when obese people are living around non-obese people.

“In geographic areas where there are lots of fat people,沃兹沃思说, “obesity has little effect on life satisfaction.”

Ditto for marriage: Studies consistently find married people are happier than their unwed counterparts, but the effect is amplified for married people living in communities where there are high rates of marriage.

Well-being and happiness, in other words, are linked to expectations.

“你的参照组是什么?? 你的期望是什么??沃兹沃思问道. “There is a fair amount of research that a disconnect between what (people) want life to be like and what it is actually like can determine how happy they are.”

Wadsworth says the findings in the recent paper point to a need for a more-interdisciplinary approach to delve further into the relationship between happiness and longevity and gain a better understanding of the processes behind the data.

“Maybe the key question is not just how to be happy, but what are the consequence of being happy,他说.

Clay Evans is a free-lance writer and longtime Boulder journalist.