Robert Waldinger is a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and the current Director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development (part of that is the so-called Harvard Grant Study; see this post for prior coverage on Mappalicious). It is a 75-year longitudinal study of 268 physically- and mentally-healthy Harvard college sophomores from the classes of 1939–1944. It has run in tandem with second study called The Glueck Study, which included another cohort of 456 disadvantaged inner-city youths from Boston.
In his TEDx talk, Waldinger shares his most important takeaways from that study on what keeps people happy and healthy – and it shouldn´t surprise you all that much:
Other People Matter!
P.S.
This presentation will also be posted as No. 46 on my topical list of Positive Psychology-infused TED talks.
Mappalicious 