Regarding the preparation of this book, we greatly appreciate the editorial suggestions made by our friends and associates, including Carlin Flora, Jhoshua Friedman, Joel Haldeman, Dr. Karen Shaw, Dr. Miriam Schustack, Rebecca Shiffman, and Michael Tyler. Eli Friedman provided advanced computer expertise. We thank our professional colleagues and support staff at the University of California, Riverside, and La Sierra University, especially Michael Yonezawa for expert library assistance and Mrs. Dianne Fewkes for research administrative support.
Our literary agent, Barbara Lowenstein, devoted her formidable expertise to this project. Finally, we thank the people at Hudson Street Press, especially Caroline Sutton, who had a clear vision for the direction of this book, and Anna Sternoff, who was heroically devoted to editing the myriad findings and conclusions and getting all the details just right.
RESEARCH COLLABORATORS
The findings reported in this book are based on twenty years of investigation by our research team, as well as our refinement and supplementation of over eight decades of data on the Terman participants. The following collaborators played a significant role in one or more of the studies. The interpretations and conclusions in this book are our own and have not been checked or endorsed by our research collaborators. Relevant research papers are referenced in the endnotes. Any opinions or errors herein are ours and not the responsibility of any research collaborator.
Dr. Joan S. Tucker completed her Ph.D. at the University of California, Riverside, in 1993 and is currently a senior behavioral scientist at the Rand Corporation in Santa Monica, California. She is one of the world’s leading authorities on social relations, behavior, and health. Joan’s particular focus in our Terman studies has been the marital stability and social networks of the participants, although she has played a vital role in many aspects of the project.
Dr. Carol Tomlinson-Keasey, in discussions with Howard Friedman starting in 1989, helped hatch the idea of a “short project” (six months or a year was the original plan) to look at personality and longevity in the Terman sample. Carol was a collaborator on many of the early studies conducted in our laboratory. In 1999 she became the founding chancellor for the University of California, Merced, the tenth campus in the UC system. She died in 2009.
Dr. Joseph E. Schwartz is a professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science at the Stony Brook University Medical Center and at the Columbia University Medical Center. Well-known in the field of advanced methodology of health research, Joe spearheaded our first study of childhood sociodemographic predictors of mortality risk and, as our team’s initial biostatistician, played a major role in guiding our analytic strategies. Joe was Howard Friedman’s roommate in graduate school.
Dr. Michael H. Criqui collaborated for many years as our team’s physician-epidemiologist and is a professor and division chief of Family and Preventive Medicine at the University of California, San Diego’s School of Medicine. An award-winning researcher in the epidemiology and prevention of cardiovascular disease, one of Mike’s roles on this project has been supervising the nosologist’s coding of all the Terman participants’ death certificates. As a collaborator from the beginning, he played a crucial part in guiding our thinking on health behaviors and causes of death.
Dr. Richard A. Lippa is well-known for his studies on gender-related individual differences (masculinity/femininity) and various personality, cognitive, and social dimensions. He is currently a professor of psychology at the California State University in Fullerton. Richard created the gender diagnosticity measures and collaborated with us as we uncovered the health risks associated with masculinity among the Terman participants.
Dr. Michael E. McCullough is a well-known expert on religion, forgiveness, and gratitude, currently at the University of Miami. Mike had the idea to examine the development and change in religious involvement among the Terman participants and then combine that information with our studies of their personalities, social ties, and longevity. He and his colleague Dr. Craig Enders brought their substantial expertise in the area of statistical modeling to bear on our study of the Terman participants’ religious involvement over time.
Dr. Glen H. Elder, Jr., is a research professor of sociology and psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an influential intellectual leader specializing in development over the life course. He was especially interested in the later-life outcomes of Terman participants who were part of the World War II effort and, along with his research team (Dr. James Scott Brown and the late Dr. Elizabeth Clipp), collaborated on our study on this topic.
Dr. Daniel R. Seldin completed his Ph.D. at the University of California, Riverside in 1999, and contributed especially to our analyses related to sexual activity and to careers. He now works in program evaluation.
Dr. Kathleen M. Clark completed her Ph.D. at the University of California, Riverside in 2000, and was a key researcher during the middle years of our twenty-year project, contributing to numerous studies. She is now a research director at a major health care company.
Dr. Keiko A. Taga completed her Ph.D. at the University of California, Riverside in 2006, and contributed significantly to our studies of bereavement and social support.
Dr. Margaret L. (Peggy) Kern in 2010 completed her Ph.D. at the University of California, Riverside. Peggy is a core collaborator on many important aspects of the research, including especially the physical activity studies, the work on early education, the work on career success, and the studies of healthy aging.
Dr. Chandra A. Reynolds is a psychology professor at the University of California, Riverside, and a leading expert on longitudinal statistical analyses and life-span developmental psychology. Chandra innovated and helped implement many of the data analyses involving change over time, as well as collaborating in important ways on studies of physical activity, careers, and partner effects.
Loryana Vie is a graduate student at the University of California, Riverside, who worked especially on the studies of marital happiness and health.
Other important collaborators include: Dr. Deborah L. Wingard, professor of Family and Preventive Medicine at the University of California, San Diego, an expert on epidemiology and women’s health, who was a key contributor to a number of studies during the first five years of our project; Dr. Catherine M. Tsai, who worked on our study of playing with pets and longevity and then headed off to medical school; Dr. Sharon Edelstein, a biostatistician who helped with many of the initial life-span longevity analyses; Dr. Charlotte N. Markey, who completed her Ph.D. at the University of California, Riverside, and worked on several of our studies of life-span health; Dr. Renee Goodwin, an epidemiologist at Columbia University, who worked on the study of conscientiousness and chronic disease; Dr. Christopher Peterson of the University of Michigan and Dr. Martin E. P. Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania, who collaborated on our study of catastrophizing and are among the founders of the field of positive psychology; and Gloria Luong, who had the rare distinction of coauthoring a major scientific paper while still an undergraduate and who is now a graduate student in psychology.