I’m always intrigued when I happen upon a clinical study that implicates important philosophical truths.[1]
The science:
Principal investigators Professor Barbara L. Fredrickson[2] and Dr. Stephen Cole[3] set out to test how feelings of happiness (good psychological health) impact the human immune system (bodily health). Their guiding referent was the hypothesis of a previous investigation in which a group of psychologically unhappy participants—all suffering from chronic stress or poor psychological health—uniformly exhibited negative immune system effects or compromised bodily health: an increased expression of genes that cause a greater susceptibility to inflammatory diseases and a decreased expression of genes that cause a greater vulnerability to infectious diseases.
With this thesis as backdrop, Fredrickson and Cole were eager to explore two related questions: Are all kinds of happiness—like all kinds of unhappiness—created equal?
Do all persons who describe themselves as “happy” enjoy uniformly positive cellular effects that boost their immune system and overall health?
To get answers, the researchers recruited 80 participants and tested them for hedonic [he-DON-ic] versuseudaimonic [u-DY-moh-nick] well-being. Out of the 80 participants, sixty-three attributed their feelings of happiness primarily to the short-term, self-gratifying pleasures from activities like eating, drinking, having sex, or amassing power, fame, and fortune.
The remaining 17 participants credited their sense of well-being predominantly to the long-term happiness that comes from self-sacrificial, altruistic activities such as building a good marriage, raising children, helping the poor, feeding the hungry, constructing homes for the homeless.
When both groups of ostensibly equally-happy people were tested for genetic correlates in their immune system cells, they exhibited unequally-positive health results:
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Read more: www.truthandcharityforum.org
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