What 88 years of the Harvard happiness study found

In 1938, researchers at Harvard started following 268 young men, students in their second year, to find out what helps people thrive. Nobody expected the study to outlive most of the people who began it.

It’s still running. Over the decades, the researchers checked medical records, drew blood, scanned brains, talked to their children and filmed them talking with their wives about what worried them most.

In 2015, the study’s director, the psychiatrist Robert Waldinger, gave a TEDx talk about what all of it had taught them. Millions of people have watched it since. His answer fit in one line: “Good relationships keep us happier and healthier. Period.”

Two groups, one finding#

Today the study follows two groups from different worlds. One is those Harvard students. The other is 456 men who grew up in some of Boston’s poorest neighbourhoods, first studied by a separate team and later brought into the Harvard study.

Their lives went everywhere. Some became factory workers, some doctors and lawyers, and one became President of the United States. Some struggled with alcohol, a few with serious mental illness.

Across both groups, the clearest message wasn’t about wealth, fame or working harder. It was about relationships. The men who were most satisfied in their relationships at 50 were, on average, the healthiest at 80.

What “good relationships” means#

Waldinger is careful about the word “good”. The study didn’t find that people with the most friends did best. In his talk he describes three lessons:

• Connection helps. People more connected to family, friends and community were happier and healthier, and lived longer.
• Loneliness hurts. People more isolated than they wanted to be were less happy, their health declined earlier in midlife, and their brains declined sooner.
• Quality beats quantity. You can be lonely in a crowd or in a marriage. In his words, “it’s the quality of your close relationships that matters”.

Relationships are a kind of fitness#

In 2023, Waldinger and his colleague Marc Schulz wrote a book about the study, The Good Life. In interviews about it, Waldinger talks about social fitness: like physical fitness, it’s a practice, not a one-off. Relationships fade without attention, and nobody stays fit from one big workout a year.

That changes what keeping in touch means. It isn’t a chore or a nice extra. The two-line message on a Tuesday, the voice note on the way home, the photo of the dinner you cooked with your grandmother’s recipe: those are the reps.

What it means for the apps we use#

If relationships are the exercise, most social apps are a gym full of mirrors. They’re built to show yourself to as many people as possible, not to keep up with the few who matter.

We built Philos the other way round: room for 49 people, a Home that ends when you’ve caught up, and Chats for the conversations that keep a relationship warm. Philos can’t do the reps for you, but it’s a good place to do them.

So here’s this week’s exercise, straight from the study: pick one relationship that matters and has gone quiet. Send something small today.

Questions people ask

What is the Harvard Study of Adult Development?

A study that began in 1938 with 268 Harvard students, later joined by 456 men who grew up in inner-city Boston. It has followed them through their lives, and later their families.

What did the Harvard happiness study find?

That the quality of our close relationships matters most for a happy, healthy life. The men most satisfied in their relationships at 50 were, on average, the healthiest at 80.