The Scientific Recipe for Greatness

May 16, 2009

Scientific RecipeThe traits of suc­cess­ful peo­ple is a sub­ject that has intrigued us since at least the 1930s. That was the era when Dale Carnegie founded self-improvement indus­try (which now worth $11 Bil­lion per year in the US alone); it was also in the late 1930s that a group of social sci­en­tists qui­etly began the ambi­tious Grant study explor­ing the lives of 268 Harvard-educated men.

Sixty years later (the study still going strong) they have basi­cally given up hope of dis­cov­er­ing the secret recipe of great­ness which they were after. (They also didn’t achieve their other lofty aim of eas­ing “the dishar­mony of the world at large.”) How­ever, they have at least iden­ti­fied seven pri­mary fac­tors that pre­dict healthy (phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal) liv­ing and aging. They are: get­ting an edu­ca­tion; hav­ing a sta­ble mar­riage; not smok­ing; employ­ing “mature adap­ta­tions;” not abus­ing alco­hol;  hav­ing some exer­cise and main­tain­ing a healthy weight.

All of these strike me as sur­pris­ingly sim­ple, straight-forward and action­able rec­om­men­da­tions –all but the one. Chal­leng­ing is the con­cept of “adap­ta­tions,” which the study has explored. Adap­ta­tions are the defence mech­a­nisms that peo­ple use to respond psy­cho­log­i­cally to chal­lenges in life:

Vail­lant explains defenses as the men­tal equiv­a­lent of a basic bio­log­i­cal process. When we cut our­selves, for exam­ple, our blood clots—a swift and invol­un­tary response that main­tains home­osta­sis. Sim­i­larly, when we encounter a chal­lenge large or small—a mother’s death or a bro­ken shoelace—our defenses float us through the emo­tional swamp. And just as clot­ting can save us from bleed­ing to death—or plug a coro­nary artery and lead to a heart attack—defenses can spell our redemp­tion or ruin. […]

The health­i­est, or “mature,” adap­ta­tions include altru­ism, humor, antic­i­pa­tion (look­ing ahead and plan­ning for future dis­com­fort), sup­pres­sion (a con­scious deci­sion to post­pone atten­tion to an impulse or con­flict, to be addressed in good time), and sub­li­ma­tion (find­ing out­lets for feel­ings, like putting aggres­sion into sport, or lust into courtship). (The Atlantic arti­cle is avail­able here.)

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    I was fortunate enough to have Dr. Chris DiCarlo as a philosophy professor in university. He is a proponent of the evolutionary and biological drivers behind reciprocal altruism, or more easily "the golden rule". Having not read the Atlantic article fully I can't comment on its entirety, however the aspect mentioned here regarding "mature adaptations" brought back a flood of thoughts in parallel with DiCarlo's lectures.

    I find it's important to remember that altruism is selfish behaviour, though it is constructive in intent and generally used with an eye to the long game. To the point, he repeatedly pointed (in my mind anyway) to the society building and stabilizing affects of altruistic behaviours. For example, if I drive an elderly person home from the grocery store in the winter, I use my own gas and time. However, I stand to gain the 'warm-fuzzies', a sense of accomplishment, perhaps the approval of my spouse and peers, perhaps prevent the senior from falling and breaking a hip which puts an unnecessary demand on our healthcare system, etc etc... So selfishly, I've done a number of good things for myself, however, in the process I'm managed to accomplish a number of things that benefit the society as a whole.

    Perhaps more succinctly, if I kill a deer, I can eat it all myself, which would benefit my fitness the most immediately or I could share the meat with my tribe (society) which adds to their odds of survival (fitness) and also create or sustains a cultural system where we help each other and perhaps next week someone else will share with me.

    Ok, finally to the point. Isn't it interesting that these altruistic traits/behaviours that make us the happiest and healthiest also directly contribute to a better society. Good old Darwinian selection on a complex organism.

    DiCarlo's recent work, I believe he won an award for this:
    http://www.relationsofnaturalsystems.com/

    As a bit of a tangent, there was an outstanding article published in the early issues of Seed magazine (had to be issue 8 or 9, while it was still very independent and Canadian owned) that explored where the aims of the benefactor following Grant were directed (good or bad) and the world shaking results that could be said to have arisen from those rather deep pockets. I realize that this sounds paranoid and cryptic, but those pockets continue to have impact and I'm not stupid.
  • That's an interesting perspective, looking at social actions from a Darwinian perspective. It reminds me a bit of the book The Gift http://www.amazon.co.uk/Gift-Creative-Spirit-Tr... You wouldn't guess it from the cover (or title of the book), but it's actually a fascinating philosophica/literary/historical look at what glue's societies together (basically gift-giving). Maybe I'll write a post on it. It really made me think about everything differently. Also Margaret Atwood liked it so much that after writing a glowing recommendation of the book she couldn't help but go on to write her own book (I believe her first popular non-fiction book ever) about the very same subject.

    I'll see if I can track down that Seed article you mentioned. Thanks. --You do sound paranoid though ;-)
  • Interesting article Tim! My response to it, is that it's interesting the study was done on Harvard grads. It would seem to me that that control group may be a group that has some slight advantages in life to start off with. In order to get into Harvard, let alone graduation you either need money & and good connections - or be brilliant and motived enough to get grants etc.

    On a personal side note - I've actually be told that I'm too altruistic - which was interesting for me to hear lol.

    Anyway hope all is well with you Tim! I'm diggin your blog!
  • Thanks Foster. Apparently the group of Harvard grads they followed included John F. Kennedy, so I'm sure you're right.

    I love the idealism/optimism these researchers had when they started their research. They were Harvard grads themselves and must have basically thought, "we Harvard people are great; we should study ourselves and tell the world how to live." :-)
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