T “Happiness is love. Period.” This is a direct quote from Dr. George E. Valiant who was director of The Study of Adult Development, known more famously as the Harvard Grant Study. This statement on happiness summarizes the ground breaking results of a longitudinal study (which continues to this day) that has been following two groups of men over the last 80 years to identify the psychosocial predictors of healthy aging. There are two groups of participants: the Grant Study composed of 268 Harvard graduates from the classes of 1939-1944 and the Glueck Study group that is made up of 456 men who grew up in the inner-city neighborhoods of Boston. The study was interested in what psychosocial variables and biological processes from earlier in life predict health and well-being in late life (80’s and 90’s), what aspects of childhood and adult experience predict the quality of intimate relationships in late life, and how late life marriage is linked with health and well-being. They are now beginning to study the children of the original participants in the G2 (Second Generation) study.
nStrong personal relationships not only lead to better health outcomes, they affect the architecture of the brain. People who are most satisfied with their lives have greater brain connectivity.
2,300 years ago, Aristotle said: “Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.”own text.
The first 3 years of life are a time of crucial developmental progress. Interactions between an infant and his/her caregiver are the very basis of the child’s development and future success.
text.
The parent/child relationship is the core relationship supporting a child’s development. “Even when young children spend most of their waking hours in child care, parents remain the most influential adults in their lives” (National Research Council, 2000, p. 226). Both mothers and fathers play a critical role, with the emotional quality of each relationship having a distinct impact on development. It is through the parent/child relationship that infants begin to understand their world across all developmental domains (Parlakian & Seibel, 2002).
Stanley Greenspan who proposed a model for emotional intelligence says that interactions between young children and their parents or other primary caregivers are extremely significant. They lay the foundation for the development of relationships which in turn help mold the child’s emotional self.
TThe parent/child relationship is the core relationship supporting a child’s development. “Even when young children spend most of their waking hours in child care, parents remain the most influential adults in their lives” (National Research Council, 2000, p. 226). Both mothers and fathers play a critical role, with the emotional quality of each relationship having a distinct impact on development. It is through the parent/child relationship that infants begin to understand their world across all developmental domains.
(Parlakian & Seibel, 2002)
This is paragraph text. Double click here to ediSome of the earliest studies on the use of the Internet and technology supported the idea that the networked age was driving us toward a sad, lonely future. In a groundbreaking 1998 study, Robert E. Kraut, a researcher at Carnegie Mellon University, recruited volunteer families with high-school-aged children, gave them computers and Internet access, and then tracked their usage. The more his participants used the Internet, he found, the more their depression increased, and the more social support and other measures of psychological well-being declined.e of the earliest studies on the use of the Internet and technology supported the idea that the networked age was driving us toward a sad, lonely future. In a groundbreaking 1998 study, Robert E. Kraut, a researcher at Carnegie Mellon University, recruited volunteer families with high-school-aged children, gave them computers and Internet access, and then tracked their usage. The more his participants used the Internet, he found, the more their depression increased, and the more social support and other measures of psychological well-being declined.
A contrasting study, though, states that “facebook is fundamentally changing the nature of relationships in ways that have been lost since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, when people began leaving their native villages behind to head to cities for new opportunities, and lost contact with the people they grew up with. “Thanks to social media, those types of relationships are persistent,” he says. “Now we may be connecting with people over the course of life that we didn’t before.
“Technology drives us up into our cortex away from our heart,” says Adam Fiore (Nautilus, Sept 17, 2015) quoting Waldinger, director of the Harvard Center for Adult Development. One widely cited 2012 study conducted by researchers at Utah Valley University of 425 undergraduates found that the more they used Facebook, the more they felt that others were happier and had better lives than they did.
This is paragraph text. Double click here to edit and add your own text.
This is paragraph text. Double click here to edit and add your own text.
Reliance on social media to feel a sense of worthiness is extremely detrimental to the wellbeing of individuals - what people post on social media is not how they live their day to day lives and is often an exaggerated version of themselves and for people to rely on that image in order to feel something is a scary reality of our society today which is inevitably going to resort in body image and mental health issues, especially among our youth.
TSocial media is not reflective of real life. While two people sharing a gushing selfie may appear like the most fun and in love couple going, you never know what is going on behind closed doors, or computer screens.
Breaking News: The results of the latest research on relatioships!!! See below.
HAPPINESS IS LOVE “Happiness is love. Period."
” This is a direct quote from Dr. George E. Valiant who was
director of The Study of Adult Development, known more famously as the Harvard Grant Study. This statement on happiness summarizes the ground breaking results of a longitudinal study (which continues to this day) that has been
following two groups of men over the last 80 years to identify
the psychosocial predictors of healthy aging. Happy people live
longer!https://www.adultdevelopmentstudy.org
HAPPY PARTNER
A happy partner leads to a healthier future. Michigan State University research found that those who are optimistic contribute to the health of their partners, staving off the risk factors leading to Alzheimer's disease, dementia and cognitive decline as they grow old together. Senior dating your spouse must be the answer to Alzheimer’s! www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020
MAINTAINING A STRONG EMOTIONAL CONNECTION
“The most important thing we’ve learned, the thing that totally stands out in all of the developmental psychology, social psychology and our lab’s work in the last 35 years is that the secret to loving relationships and to keeping them strong and vibrant over the years, to falling in love again and again, is emotional responsiveness,” says Sue Johnson, a clinical psychologist in Ottawa and the author of several books, including “Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love.” Emotional responsiveness is the ability to sense what the other person is feeling and to communicate to him/her that you understand that feeling. www.time.com/5321262/science-behind-happy-healthy-relationships
BAD MEMORIES STICK BETTER THAN GOOD
We remember the bad times better than the good
because our emotions influence how we process
memories, a new review of research shows. "It really
does matter whether an event is positive or negative
because most, if not all of the time, negative events tend to be remembered in a more accurate fashion than positive events," So don’t be surprised if you remember the time the class bully pushed you down in kindergarten, but can’t remember your first communion in second grade
Apparently, “the brain handles positive and negative information in different hemispheres of the brain,” said Professor Clifford Nass of Stanford University. Negative emotions generally involve more thinking, and the information is processed more thoroughly. So, if you want to remember the good times? Make sure you think about them more, or better even, write them down. A journal will always be around to jog your memory bank open. By Andrea Thompson www.livescience.com
RELATIONSHIP ISN’T ALL ROMANCE
Research consistently shows that intimate romantic
relationships, particularly marriage, play a vital contextual
role in the etiology, development, and course of
psychopathology. In layman’s terms, if your marriage
isn’t working, you could be setting the stage for mental
bad news. Both cross-sectional and longitudinal research demonstrates a link between marital distress and various
forms of mental illness, including depression, anxiety, and alcoholism. www.purdue.edu/hhs/psy/RMHLab/current-research
TECHNOLOGY: ANGEL OR DEVIL
“Technology drives us up into our cortex away from our heart,” says Adam Fiore (Nautilus, Sept 17, 2015) quoting Waldinger, director of the Harvard Center for Adult Development. One widely cited 2012 study conducted by researchers at Utah Valley University of 425 undergraduates found that the more they used Facebook, the more they felt that others were happier and had better lives than they did.
EARLY STUDIES
Some of the earliest studies on the use of the Internet
and technology supported the idea that the networked
age was driving us toward a sad, lonely future. In a groundbreaking 1998 study, Robert E. Kraut, a
researcher at Carnegie Mellon University, recruited volunteer families with high-school-aged children,
gave them computers and Internet access, and then
tracked their usage. The more his participants used the Internet, he found, the more their depression increased,
and the more social support and other measures of psychological well-being declined
TLATER STUDIEShis is paragraph text. Double click here to edit and add your own text.
LATER STUDIES
A contrasting study, though, states that “facebook is fundamentally changing the nature of relationships in ways that have been lost since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, when people began leaving their native villages behind to head to cities for new opportunities, and lost contact with the people they grew up with. “Thanks to social media, those types of relationships are persistent,” he says. “Now we may be connecting with people over the course of life that we didn’t before.
www.razorsocial.com/social-media-relationships/
SOME SAY SOCIAL MEDIA HELPS
Experts say that social media helps relationships about 13% more than it hurts them. In a recent study, Pew Research discovered that social media has an impact on 66% of relationships. But, contrary to popular belief, this impact is usually positive. For long term relationships, Pew reports that the impact is much larger and much more positive. Some couples do report that social media causes friction in their relationships, but much of this tension could have been avoided. https://www.lifehack.org/423446/5-ways-social-media-helps-relationships-more-than-it-hurts
SOME SAY IT HURTS
Studies and personal experience reveal people tend to put their best foot forward while interacting on social media. Displays of emotional weakness, insecurity, or conflicts generally tend to be concealed or minimized on social networking sites. It is often difficult, if not impossible, on social media to reveal the qualities that define deep, intimate relationships. While our social media friends offer us a great deal, it is not a true substitute or even supplement for real-life interactions with others.
THE CONSTANT CHECKER
More than a decade after the emergence of smartphones,
Facebook and Twitter, a profile is emerging of the
“constant checker.” Such avid technology and social
media use has paved the way for the “constant checker”
— those who constantly check their emails, texts or social media accounts
(43 percent of Americans). This attachment to devices and the constant use of technology is associated with higher stress levels. Generally, nearly one-fifth of Americans (18 percent) identify the use of technology as a very or somewhat significant source of stress. The most stressful aspect? Americans say technology causes the most stress when it doesn’t work (20 percent). By Shelley Galasso Bonanno, MA Technology and Stress Snapshot https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/stress/2017/technology-social-media.pdf
THE UGLY TRUTH ABOUT ONLINE DATING
“Online dating services are now the second most popular way to meet a partner. The popularity of online dating is being driven by several things, but a major factor is time. Online dating presents an effective solution to a serious problem.”*
People lie on their online dating profiles, to varying degrees, women more than men, but lie nonetheless. One of the big problems with online dating for women is that, although there are genuine relationship-seeking men on the sites, there are also plenty of guys on there simply looking for sex.
Negotiating the scam-ternet: Let’s be honest, the internet is really just a super elaborate, sophisticated farce designed to distract you from the travails of forming and nurturing face-to-face relationships. According to research conducted at Michigan State University, relationships that start out online are 28% more likely to break down in their first year than relationships where the couples first met face-to-face. And it gets worse. Couples who met online are nearly three times as likely to get divorced as couples that met face-to-face. Also, according to the Association for Psychological Science, reviewing multiple candidates causes people to be more judgmental and inclined to dismiss a not-quite-perfect candidate than they otherwise would be in a face-to-face meeting.
*Ryan Anderson PhD www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-mating-game/201609/the-ugly-truth-about-online-dating.
14 SECRETS TO A GREAT RELATIONSHIP
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/rediscovering-love/201511/14-secrets-great-relationship
This is paragraph text. Double click here to edit and add your own text.
BENEFITS OF SOCIAL NETWORKS TO
DISASTER RESPONSE QUESTIONED
Communication within groups not as
helpful as anticipated.
Faced with a common peril, people delay making decisions that might save lives, fail to alert each other to danger and spread misinformation. Those may sound like behaviors associated with the current pandemic, but they actually surfaced in experiments on how social networks function in emergencies. Hirokazu Shirado, an assistant professor in Carnegie Mellon University's Human-Computer Interaction Institute, said he had expected his experiments to show that social networks, such as neighbors, work groups and extended families, would improve decision-making by giving people actionable information. "What we found is that social networks make things worse."
Compared with the isolated individuals, the networked players consistently tended to resist evacuation, regardless of whether the danger was real or not. Communication didn't improve decision-making so much as it delayed it, Shirado said. The networked players also generated misinformation, even though nobody had an incentive to do so.
AGE, GENDER, AND CULTURE
PREDICT LONELINESS
Young people, men and people in 'individualistic' societies report higher levels of loneliness, according to a large-scale global study. The study -- based on responses from more than 46,000 participants around the world -- is the first published research to come from the BBC Loneliness Experiment. The ages of participants ranged from 16-99, and the results show a steady decrease in loneliness as people age. Based on the findings, a young man living in an individualistic society -- such as the UK or the US -- is more likely to report feeling lonely than an older woman in a collectivist society -- such as China or Brazil.
The study was carried out by Exeter, Manchester and Brunel universities. "Contrary to what people may expect, loneliness is not a predicament unique to older people," said Professor Manuela Barreto, of the University of Exeter.
"In fact, younger people report greater feelings of loneliness. "Since loneliness stems from the sense that one's social connections are not as good as desired, this might be due to the different expectations younger and older people hold. "The age pattern we discovered seems to hold across many countries and cultures." "Though it is true that younger people are better able to use technology to access social relationships, it is also known than when this is done as a replacement -- rather than an extension -- of those relationships, it does not mitigate loneliness," she said.
IIT'S POSSIBLE TO CREATE
PROXIMITY ONLINE
Despite physical distance, it's possible to create proximity between family members located in different places. This is according to a study that has investigated how video calls bring family members together. The results show that proximity in video calls is established mainly by way of the body and the senses, e.g. by giving a digital high five. Anna Martín Bylund and Linnéa Stenliden of Linkoping University in China, have studied the social and emotional challenges that geographical distance can create among family members who are spread out in different countries, and how longing is expressed in video calls.
"Our study shows that in a video call, an interaction can develop where the participants feel proximity. This interaction is enacted by way of the body and the senses, as well as other means like the camera and the technology. This research has become extra relevant in these corona times, when many of us are forced to communicate digitally," They see how the physical distance and the digital interface present various challenges, but that proximity is still established, in creative and to a degree, innovative ways.
Humor, creativity and memories also create proximity. In video calls, the room is very important because of what appears on screen and how the body is coordinated in relation to the camera lens. "Our study contributes insights into how technological solutions are used for everyday communication, in order to overcome distance in families with roots in different countries.”
ARE OUR BRAINS HARD-WIRED FOR LONGING?
Imaging study suggests absence may truly make
the heart grow fonder.
(University of Colorado at Boulder)
A new brain imaging study of prairie voles -- which are among only about 5% of mammalian species besides humans who are monogamous -- found that when it comes to forming bonds, longing may be as important as being together. Previous brain imaging research in humans has shown altered brain activity in a region called the nucleus accumbens, the same reward center that lights up during heroin or cocaine use, when the research subjects held the hand of a romantic partner versus a stranger. So, at first, the research team assumed the voles' brain activity would be markedly different when they were huddling with their mate versus a random vole. "Surprisingly, that is not what we found," she said. Stranger or lover, the voles' brains looked basically the same when they were together.
It was only when the voles were away from their partner and running to meet them -- imagine the classic romantic reunion-scene at the airport or the theme of any number of love poems -- that a unique cluster of cells in the nucleus accumbens consistently fired up. The longer the animals had been paired, the closer their bond became and the larger the glowing cluster of cells -- dubbed the "partner approach ensemble" -- on image screens. Notably, a completely different cluster of cells lit up when the vole approached a stranger. This suggests that maybe the recruitment of these cells for this new purpose is important for forming and maintaining a bond. What the study does confirm is that monogamous mammals are uniquely hard-wired to be with others.
WHAT HELPS COUPLES
WEATHER FINANCIAL STORMS?
University of Arizona
In financially challenging times, it's especially important to show your partner love and support, say researchers, who studied what contributes to couples' success in financially stressful times.
Experts have predicted that the COVID-19 pandemic will result in the worst financial crisis in the United States since the Great Depression. While the full scope of the financial fallout remains to be seen, furloughs, job losses and pay cuts resulting from the outbreak have already hit many people hard, and such financial challenges can put a significant strain on romantic relationships.
Both studies found that the strongest relationships were those in which partners remembered to practice respecting one another, being there for one another, and showing love and affection for one another. "A big take-home message is the importance of these relationship maintenance behaviors, especially when you're experiencing financial stress. It's hard to remember to do this, but making sure that your partner knows that you're there for them, and doing things that show love and affection for them are really important."
MONEY CAN'T BUY LOVE OR FRIENDSHP
Basing self-worth on financial success
creates pressures that hurt important social connections.
While researchers have suggested that individuals who base their self-worth on their financial success often feel lonely in everyday life, a new study has taken initial steps to better understand why this link exists.
At the center of this research is a concept psychologists identify as Financial Contingency of Self-Worth. When people's self-worth is contingent on money, they view their financial success as being tied to the core of who they are as a person. The degree to which they succeed financially relates to how they feel about themselves -- feeling good when they think they're doing well financially, but feeling worthless if they're feeling financially insecure. "We saw consistent associations between valuing money in terms of who you are and experiencing negative social outcomes in previous work. We see these findings as further evidence that people who base their self-worth on money are likely to feel pressured to achieve financial success, which is tied to the quality of their relationships with others."
