One matter that continues to stump researchers, for example, is why those in the upper middle class tend to live longer than those in the middle class, when both have enough food, housing, and medical care. Our study of the Terman participants examined this question in a very different way from the standard rich-versus-poor or favored-versus-deprived approach. In our study, we had a mostly advantaged, middle-class, educated sample of people, and yet the highly successful long outlived their very bright peers who were less successful. If their surroundings were alike, then, we wondered, could it perhaps be their individual personalities that accounted for the difference?
Conscientiousness, as we have established, is a strong predictor of longevity, and it turns out that the professionally successful Terman subjects were indeed more conscientious than their peers. But conscientiousness didn’t explain everything: those with a successful career lived much longer even after taking their conscientiousness into account.
Conscientiousness did, however, make a big difference for those who were least successful in their careers. Those men who were very unsuccessful in their careers and who were also very unconscientious (on their childhood assessments) had a whopping increase in their mortality risk. If you were both unconscientious and unsuccessful, you were especially likely to die before reaching even age sixty.
Not surprisingly, ambition predicted career success. More to the point, ambition, coupled with perseverance, impulse control, and high motivation, was not only good for achievement but was part of the package of a resilient work life. It is not a coincidence that Edward Dmytryk was a prominent director and lived a long life or that Norris Bradbury headed a powerful agency and lived a long life. Symphony conductors, company presidents, and bosses of all sorts tend to live longer than their subordinates.
Complementing our own analyses, the sociologist Glen Elder and his colleagues looked at career changes between 1940 and 1960 and found evidence that the Terman men who moved among various jobs without a clear progression were less likely to live long lives than those with steadily increasing responsibilities in their field.68 In other words, a stable and successful career is often part and parcel of a successful pathway to long life. Usually this increasing responsibility brings more challenges and a heavier workload, but paradoxically this is helpful to long-term health.
The Real Source of Workplace Stress
Converging evidence from a number of studies suggest that the damaging sort of workplace stress arises from conflicts with other people rather than from the challenges and demands of the work itself. Having a poor relationship with your overbearing boss can lead to health problems, and not getting along with your coworkers can be quite harmful. This is especially true if you have lots of responsibilities that depend on the cooperation of others but you do not have the resources or the leadership qualities to make things happen. On the other hand, if you have resources and a good deal of influence over outcomes, demanding tasks will be less stressful for you. It makes sense that those agency heads, symphony conductors, and company presidents who have both power and leadership skills will tend to remain healthy despite very demanding careers.
Individuals who tend to react with hostility to interpersonal slights are particularly likely to suffer lingering physiological damage. Those Terman subjects who were less critical of others, tried to avoid arguments, and didn’t always try to get things their own way tended to be healthier and live longer. John, Norris, and others did not shy away from controversy but did seek out the good in other people. In fact, Edward Dmytryk blamed his good intentions and his desire for solidarity with the others of the Hollywood 10 for his early affiliation with the Communist Party, which he was later quick to abandon.
To some extent unhealthy behaviors and circumstances—more smoking and drinking, and less stable marriages—played a role in the unsuccessful Terman subjects’ earlier deaths, but the core problem of being unconscientious and unsuccessful remained even for those who never chose partying over work. It was something deeper about how they lived their lives that led them to die sooner. Unsuccessful Terman subjects who had been characterized as having comparatively low motivation even in childhood were at greater mortality risk than successful individuals.
In the early 1970s—a half century into the study—the Terman men who were still alive were in their sixties, and their working lives, including occupational achievement and work satisfaction, were again assessed in some detail.69 The first thing that was clear was that work and family were the most important aspects of life for the Terman men, more so than friends or the pursuit of culture or happiness. Work was not seen as stress to be shunned but was highly valued.
But what predicted their degree of work satisfaction? Those, like John, who had earlier (in 1940) felt that they had chosen their occupation (rather than drifted into it) were much more satisfied. Further, those who had always been more ambitious and liked the challenges of work were more satisfied as they approached their retirement years.
What About the Women?
Melita Mary Hogg Oden was born in 1898 in Saratoga, California, and attended college twenty miles up the road at Stanford University. Fortunately for Melita, Stanford, which was a new school in fast-growing California, happened to be one of the few private colleges to admit both men and women. She studied psychology and graduated in 1921, just as Lewis Terman was launching his major project. Melita was recruited to assist, and she spent the next four decades at Terman’s side.70
In Dr. Terman’s first published works, Melita is not mentioned, although by his 1930 book The Promise of Youth, she is credited as an assistant. But by the time of the major 1947 book The Gifted Child Grows Up: Twenty-five Years’ Follow-up of a Superior Group, Melita Oden is the coauthor. Still, even in this volume, Terman writes in the preface, “Mrs. Oden has served continuously as my research associate in the follow-up study of the group since 1936,”71 and goes on to thank her for checking “the typed characters against manuscript copy” and for reading the printer’s proof.
Some hint of the major—and understated—contributions of Melita Oden to the Terman project comes from her activities after Lewis Terman died, when she returned to Saratoga. There she helped found the Saratoga Historical Foundation and became its historian, a position she held for many years. She kept extensive and meticulous records about Saratoga until her death in 1993. Widowed in 1959, she thrived for decades and was named Saratoga “Citizen of the Year” for 1976. In today’s world, of course, Melita Oden would have become a professor herself, not merely Terman’s essential and eternal research assistant.
Melita was not a Terman subject, but her life history parallels those of a lot of the female Terman participants. Many were highly successful, but within the limits that society imposed on them. Because their career titles were often misleading or meaningless, we could not formally examine the careers and longevity of the women. But our sense is that the results would have been analogous to those of the men. Melita Oden—bright, hardworking, well educated, very meticulous, and highly accomplished—lived in good health until she died at age ninety-five.
68
The study of career progression is E. K. Pavalko, G. H. Elder, and E. C. Clipp,
69
Robert Sears, himself a Terman participant, had taken over certain responsibilities for the study and made major contributions to the database, including looking into this aspect of career satisfaction. See R. R. Sears, “Sources of Life Satisfactions of the Terman Gifted Men,”
70
To read more about Melita Oden’s life, see “Melita Oden, 95, Researcher, Caretaker of Saratoga’s History” in the
71
Terman’s preface thanking Mrs. Oden is in Terman and Oden,