The Science of Happiness: how our brains make us happy and what we can do to get happier by Stefan Klein

Author:Stefan Klein [Klein, Stefan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: PSY000000, SCI000000, SCI089000, PSY020000
Publisher: Scribe Publications
Published: 2006-11-19T16:00:00+00:00

10

FRIENDSHIP

ISAAC LIKED RACHEL. They had been friends since childhood. Physical attraction didn’t seem to play much of a part in their relationship. In any case, during those years they had sex so infrequently—if at all—that Rachel never got pregnant by him. Not that Isaac, vital as he was, had no offspring. He had fathered any number of children, though not with Rachel. But he and Rachel loved spending time together. While the other males indulged in the usual status struggles, Isaac and Rachel stayed on the sidelines and observed it all as if from another world. They sat next to one another in the grass, eating fruit and grooming one another for hours. If you could ever call baboons “happy,” then these two were.

For years Robert Sapolsky, a California neuroscientist, observed and documented the lives of a troop of baboons in Africa’s Serengeti. Taking regular blood tests from the troop’s males and examining the samples for levels of stress hormones like cortisol, he could support his claim of Isaac’s well-being with actual data. (In order not to endanger nursing young or fetuses with the anesthesia, females were not included in the experiment.) In Isaac, the quantities of the transmitter were unusually low. He not only seemed more relaxed than the others—he really was.

Sapolsky made similar observations with many animals besides Isaac. The more friendships a baboon had, and the more lasting they were, the less he suffered from stress. The more often he sat with and looked after his comrades, the less life’s troubles seemed to bother him. Tending to social bonds is healthful, because stress doesn’t only diminish emotional well-being but is physically harmful.1

For Isaac, in any case, the friendship with Rachel paid off. While other males of his generation had long before been killed in fights, or died from sudden illness or aging bodies, he continued to live in the savanna, happy and healthy, grooming his friend.2

PEOPLE WITH FRIENDS LIVE LONGER

Good company is beneficial to humans, too. Hearing a familiar voice, we smile easily and feel secure. People who suffer from loneliness or don’t get along with others will have a hard time experiencing positive feelings. Friendships and family warmth are like a loamy soil in which happiness thrives.

“If you take friendship out of life, you take the sun out of the world,” said the Roman statesman Cicero. Modern sociological research confirms how important sociability is for well-being. Bonds with others are one of the few external factors that can increase life satisfaction under almost all conditions, as the English social psychologist Michael Argyle and other scientists have shown. Only the quality of the relationship with one’s partner, frequency of sex, and exercise are of comparable or still greater importance.3

Having friends also helps increase our life expectancy. Several studies of some ten thousand Western Europeans and Americans come to this conclusion. Social contacts have on average at least as much impact on life expectancy as smoking, high blood pressure, obesity, and regular physical activity. Independent of age,

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