Harvard Authors Spotlight: Dr. Robert Waldinger and Dr. Marc Schulz

In its 85 years, the Harvard Study of Adult Development — the longest running longitudinal study on adult happiness — has found that there is a clear answer to what makes a joyful and fulfilling life. In the first few pages of their recent book, “The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness,” the study’s co-directors Dr. Robert J. Waldinger ’73 and Dr. Marc Schulz plainly state, “Good relationships keep us healthier and happier. Period.”

In “The Good Life,” Waldinger and Schulz use a rich array of case studies from the Harvard Study and their own experiences to make a simple, yet life-changing finding. The authors challenge the common assumption that making relationships is an innate human skill that can be left in the background. Instead, through studying participants’ rich life experiences they convincingly demonstrate that personal connections are not byproducts of life experiences, but their driving force.

The Harvard Study of Adult Development began in 1938, with the intention of “investigating not what made people sick but what made them thrive.” The original 724 subjects were young men and boys from the Boston area chosen from two populations: 268 were Harvard undergraduates and 456 were from Boston’s inner-city and disadvantaged neighborhoods. Subjects agreed to answer a thorough set of survey and interview questions every two years.

Collected over hundreds of lifetimes, the biennial check-ins constructed detailed portraits of participants’ health using emotional wellbeing surveys, medical tests, and biographical interviews. These interviews are prominently featured in “The Good Life,” and to powerful effect. The authors vividly describe intimate conversations that participants had with researchers and loved ones, in which they express vulnerable reflections that affirm the importance of relationships. In one moving example from the book, an elderly couple expressed to each other that their greatest fear is the other’s death and the loneliness that would ensue.

This focus on personal stories makes “The Good Life” a compelling read. Unlike other books in the self-help genre that seek to address today’s historically high levels of loneliness with statistics, psychological jargon, and to-do lists, “The Good Life” lets the rich life stories of the study speak for themselves.

Within a few hundred pages, readers see dozens of rich lives unfold, each of which illuminates the complexities of building and maintaining healthy relationships.

An ambitious Harvard student compromised on his career goals to support his family after his parents’ deaths; his lifelong commitment to caring for others helped him to lead one of the happiest lives in the study. Readers can also track how a young woman’s coming out caused her family to fall apart then grew back together, from the perspectives of multiple family members. Insightful commentary and useful tools for assessing readers’ personal relationships further supplement these stories.

Both Waldinger and Schulz’s experiences led them to devote their lives to exploring human happiness. Waldinger studied History of Science as a Harvard undergraduate before entering Harvard Medical School. At medical school, Waldinger found psychiatry a natural fit for his interest in personal histories. In addition to directing the Harvard Study since 2010, Waldinger is a clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School as well as a practicing psychiatrist and Zen priest.

For Schulz, he recalls that he was a “neuroscience guy” in his first couple years at Amherst College. After realizing that a bigger-picture view of people’s lives was more interesting, he majored in sociology and pursued a career in policy and community-organizing. Yet, he still sought a more direct means of interacting with people and earned a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of California, Berkeley. Schulz has co-directed the Harvard Study with Waldinger since 2014; he is also a professor of psychology at Bryn Mawr College and a practicing psychologist.

In an interview with the Harvard Crimson, when asked about their motive for compiling key findings from the study in a published book, Waldinger and Schulz shared a smile and referred to a TED Talk that Waldinger gave in 2016. The presentation went viral, amassing almost 23 million views.

“Going viral showed us that there’s a real hunger for this kind of information. People want to know, what does science say about who thrives as they go through life?” Waldinger recalled. As is often the case in academia, results from the Study on Adult Development often remained hidden in journals, motivating Waldinger and Schulz to write “The Good Life” for a larger audience to benefit from their work.

Although the correlation between strong relationships and happiness may seem like common sense, the authors explain that the challenge arises from humans’ irrationality and inability to predict what will make them truly happy.

“There’s been a movement in psychology for quite a while now to try and capture the thinking mistakes we make, the illogical conclusions and assumptions we make,” Schulz said.

In line with this tradition, “The Good Life” seeks to dispel the pervasive and harmful misconception that relationships can take care of themselves while other goals like wealth and fame take priority.

Waldinger and Schulz found that like any other investment, relationships struggle when left unattended. Waldinger marveled at the consistency with which the study revealed that “the people who were the happiest, the healthiest, all that good stuff were the people who were more active, who were more intentional” about making relationships. The book’s illustrative case studies and reflective tools encourage readers to commit more deeply to pre-existing relationships.

For readers looking for a fresh start, “The Good Life” features stories that offer plenty of guidance on life’s serendipity with a growth mindset.

“What we find from studying these people through their lives is that things happen when we least expect it,” Schulz said.

He then referenced one of his favorite psychological experiments: people consistently predict that talking with a stranger on a train will be an unpleasant experience. Yet, the vast majority of experiment subjects, when instructed by a psychologist to speak to a stranger, rated the interaction as a positive, energizing experience. People may believe that they are set in their ways and know what will make them happy, but research finds that any opportunity to build connections can be valuable.

Amidst the dozens of relationships described in “The Good Life”, one in particular stands out — Waldinger and Schulz’s bond as collaborators and lifelong friends. Chapters often end with anecdotes from the co-authors’ lives to illustrate how they have supported each other through life’s milestones and challenges. Their friendship also manifests in the book’s warm, easy-going tone that makes readers feel invited into this rich friendship.

The two met 30 years ago, as co-workers on another longitudinal study on happiness. To nurture their initial connection, Waldinger and Schulz have made the effort to spend at least 90 minutes with each other every week over the past 30 years. Schulz remarked that Waldinger has served as an invaluable older brother figure.

Waldinger further added that the relationship has been incredibly sustaining professionally and personally: “Finding good collaborators is really just a huge benefit. Mark and I each have different strengths, and we do things together we could never do by ourselves. Besides the friendship, there is this kind of fitting together of different abilities that really makes a difference.”

It’s no wonder, then, that “The Good Life” focuses on the power of relationships — it is an undeniable truth, supported by decades of research and the authors’ lifelong friendship. Through touching anecdotes and practical tools, this book empowers readers to make an active commitment to both maintaining existing relationships and building new connections.