Social Butterflies
As we noted, Linda had a large social network. With her extended family nearby, she saw most of her relatives at least once a month. She also had a lot of friends. She saw two of these friends regularly in her congregation, and she talked to four other friends about health and career matters.
James felt socially secure and supported—perceiving that he could count on his now-grown children to help with daily tasks when needed. He felt they were genuinely interested in listening to him. He had some close friends with whom he would play cards, especially when he was worried or facing an important decision. In contrast to James, John’s friendships tended to center around his career, though he did keep in touch with his wartime buddies.
Barbara, the social worker and overall humanist, had a different kind of social support—that which comes from helping others. She had good social relations not only because her job involved connecting to others, but because she also frequently assisted her friends and her church in organizing community service projects. What she loved most about her congregation was that it gave her the chance to help her friends and neighbors directly, as well as to reach out to those in need beyond her immediate social circle. We were now getting at the heart of the question to which our religion findings had pointed us: What aspects of social support matter most when it comes to longevity? Which pieces of congregational connections are most relevant to long life?
Social Support and Long Life
To determine which aspects of social ties were prominent on the path to long life, we examined how the various aspects of social support at around retirement age were related to mortality risk over the ensuing two decades. We figured that if a Terman participant sincerely felt that he or she had friends and relatives to count on when having a hard time then that person would be healthier. Those who felt very loved and cared for, we predicted, would live the longest. Surprise: our prediction was wrong. Although other studies have shown that people who feel loved and cared for will report a better sense of well-being—they feel better—we did not find that it helped much for living a long life.
What about focusing on the size of social networks rather than emphasizing only feelings? Does having regular contact with a large number of close, comfortable friends make a difference? A clear finding was that those who had a large social network lived longer. Just as we had seen in our studies of religiosity, social networks matter a lot.
Beyond social network size, the clearest benefit of social relationships came from helping others. Those who helped their friends and neighbors, advising and caring for others, tended to live to old age. Those like Barbara, who had large networks and good social relations because they helped others, were reaping a real benefit in terms of their longevity.80
Do the Good Die Young?
Over three hundred years ago Daniel Defoe, famous for his novel Robinson Crusoe, asserted, “The best of men cannot suspend their fate: The good die early, and the bad die late.”81 We did not find this to be true at all, instead finding that many of the most agreeable, thoughtful, and helpful Terman subjects, including Linda, were among the longest living.
That said, we saw again and again that it was not the feel-good aspects of having friends that was associated with long life. Rather, it was the more hands-on pieces that mattered most—being in contact with family members, doing things with friends, and helping others. When taken in total with the many other characteristics of long life—being conscientious, being in a good marriage, having healthy habits, and working hard in a successful career—Defoe’s adage really crumbles. While his catchy saying has become a truism, repeated endlessly over the years in movies, songs, and philosophies, there’s no real evidence that the good die young. In fact, although there are always some exceptions (which are therefore notable), generally speaking, it’s the good ones who can actually help shape their fate; the bad die early, and the good do great.
Are Pets Truly Substitute Friends?
Animals often provide their owners with love, purpose, and security. Some researchers even suggest that pets are a good substitute for human companionship. It’s true that animals can encourage healthy behaviors—when you take your dog for a daily walk, you are also getting a walk. And they encourage a degree of responsibility and organization. As pet owners and fans, we weren’t about to argue a broad case against the benefits of having pets, but, over the long term, we wanted to see whether regularly interacting with pets produced measureable health benefits for the Terman participants.
In 1977, when they were in their sixties, the subjects were asked how often they played with pets—“never,” “seldom,” “occasionally,” or “frequently.” This was the perfect question, because we didn’t care if someone had a pet but never interacted with that pet.
Using this question and the long life data, we looked to see whether those who played more with pets were more likely to survive over the next fourteen years. Another surprise: they were not. Not at all.82
Perhaps many of these pet aficionados already had good social support from people, meaning that animal companionship had little to add. If this were true, playing with pets would not be important for the group as a whole, but it might be quite important for those who were socially isolated. For them, pets could be filling in the gap that would otherwise be filled with people. We ran the statistical analyses again, this time looking just at the socially isolated. But the results were the same. Playing with pets wasn’t associated with longer life.
We had to conclude that urging your elderly aunt who really doesn’t like animals to get a dog so she will have a health-promoting companion is probably not a worthwhile idea. Having a pet is great if it brings joy to your life, but we found no evidence that it will provide the social enrichment that is so important to long life.
Social Life and Misconceptions about Life Expectancy
The average life expectancy of an American born around the time of the Terman participants (about 1910) was forty-seven years. The average life expectancy of an American born in recent years is about seventy-nine. Still, it is totally incorrect to conclude that today’s middle-aged adults will live many, many years longer in retirement than did their predecessors.
The error arises from the fact that average life expectancy is computed from birth. For the Terman subjects’ generation, many children died at birth or shortly thereafter. Many others died of childhood diseases. The twentieth century saw tremendous advances in sanitation, housing, food supply, and vaccines, leading to a dramatic plunge in deaths during infancy and childhood. So-called modern medical cures have played a relatively minor role in increasing adult life span, something most people do not understand.
The truth is that the life expectancy of a sixty-year-old white American male has only increased by about four or five years during the last half century, and some of that is likewise due to better housing, nutrition, safety (such as seat belts), and sanitation. It is a great misconception (with serious implications) in our society that modern medicine has led to huge increases in the longevity of American adults.
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Last year, in a funny episode, we were approached by a confused insect specialist from another university who wanted advice on how to set up a computer model for social networking based on the typical behaviors of those most social of insects, termites. We had to explain to him that we don’t study the insect termites but the human ones—Terman’s “Termites.” But we were able to add that just as insect termites help ensure the survival of their colonies through cooperation and self-sacrifice, human “Termites” in social networks who lend a hand to others are helping to ensure their own survival.
81
The Defoe quote comes from
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We describe our study regarding pets in more detail in J. S. Tucker, H. S. Friedman, C. M. Tsai, and L. R. Martin, “Playing with Pets and Longevity among the Elderly,”