考研阅读精选：幸福让生命更长久
Happiness linked to longer lifehttp://images.koolearn.com/casupload/upload/fckeditorUpload/2011-11-21/image/7e25fe425de04b9ead0320110849db85.jpg
Being happy doesn't just improve the quality of your life. According toa new study, it may increase the quantity of your life as well.
Older people were up to 35% less likely to die during the five-yearstudy if they reported feeling happy, excited, and content on a typicalday. And this was true even though the researchers took factors such aschronic health problems, depression, and financial security out of theequation.
"We had expected that we might see a link betweenhow happy people felt over the day and their future mortality, but wewere struck by how strong the effect was," says Andrew Steptoe, Ph.D.,the lead author of the study and a professor of psychology at UniversityCollege London, in the United Kingdom.
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Previous studies on happiness and longevity have largely relied on theparticipants' ability to recall how they felt during a certain period oftime in the past. These recollections aren't always accurate, though,and to get around this problem Steptoe and his colleagues asked morethan 3,800 people to record their levels of happiness, anxiety, andother emotions at four specific times over the course of a single day.
The participants, who were between the ages of 52 and 79 when the studybegan, were divided into three groups according to how happy andpositive they felt. Although the groups differed slightly on somemeasures (such as age, wealth, and smoking), they were comparable interms of ethnic makeup, education, employment status, and overallhealth.
Five years later, 7% of people in the least happygroup had died, compared with just 4% in the happiest group and 5% inthe middle group.
When the researchers controlled for age,depression, chronic diseases, health behaviors (such as exercise andalcohol consumption), and socioeconomic factors, they found that thehappiest and medium-happy people were 35% and 20% less likely to havedied, respectively, than their gloomier counterparts.
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It may seem far-fetched that a person's feelings on one particular daywould be able to predict the likelihood of dying in the near future, butthese emotional snapshots have proven to be a good indication ofoverall temperament in previous studies, says Sarah Pressman, Ph.D., aprofessor of psychology at the University of Kansas, in Lawrence.
"There is always room for error, of course; if I get a parking ticketor stub my toe on the way to the study, I'm not going to be particularlyhappy," says Pressman, who was not involved in the study but researchesthe impact of happiness on health. "But given that the study worked, itsuggests that, on average, this day was fairly typical for theparticipants."
Unlike the happiness measures, depressionsymptoms were not associated with mortality rates once the researchersadjusted for overall health. According to the study, this findingsuggests that the absence of happiness may be a more important measureof health in older people than the presence of negative emotions.
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Positive emotions could contribute to better physical health in anumber of ways. Regions of the brain involved in happiness are alsoinvolved in blood-vessel function and inflammation, for instance, andstudies have shown that levels of the stress hormone cortisol tend torise and fall with emotion.
The study doesn't prove thathappiness (or unhappiness) directly affects lifespan, but the findingsdo imply that doctors and caregivers should pay close attention to theemotional well-being of older patients, the researchers say. "We wouldnot advocate from this study that trying to be happier would have directhealth benefits," Steptoe says.
However, this study andothers like it should help establish happiness as a legitimate area ofconcern for health professionals, Pressman says. "There are still somepeople who see happiness as something fluffy and less scientific -- notsomething they should be worried about like, say, stress or depression,"she says.
Happiness, she adds, "may be something for doctors to ask their patients about."
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