What are the elements of a good life? What constitutes a happy life?

These are age-old philosophical questions, but more than 80 years ago, researchers in Boston began working on a new way to answer them.

During the closing years of the Depression and the beginning of World War II, these researchers began following two groups of people, several hundred

Harvard undergraduates and several hundred boys from some of Boston's poorest neighborhoods.

The researchers documented the participants' lives in exhausting detail, through surveys,

interviews with them and their families, medical records, and more.

They then stuck with them, continuing to follow their lives as the men aged, all in an effort

to find out which factors would ultimately lead to health, happiness, and well-being.

Remarkably, 80 years later, the project is still going strong.

It's called the Harvard Study of Adult Development, and it now includes many of the original

participants' spouses and their children, too.

So what have researchers learned from following these men and their families?

What led to lasting happiness?

Was it love, friendship, money, career success, all of the above?

Is happiness innate?

Are some people born happier than others and just destined to stay that way? Or is happiness something you can choose or cultivate? And how can

examining the lives of people born more than a century ago yield insights that remain relevant

for people today, living in a very different world.

Welcome to Speaking of Psychology, the flagship podcast of the American Psychological Association

that examines the links between psychological science and everyday life.

I'm Kim Mills.

My guest today is Dr. Mark Schultz, the Associate Director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development.

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