The Grant Study at Harvard examined 268 male students from every physical and psychological standpoint in the early 1940s (one of those studied was Ben Bradlee). Researchers then continued to follow these men for the next seventy years or so in pursuit of a formula for a good life.
Is there a formula—some mix of love, work, and psychological adaptation—for a good life? For 72 years, researchers at Harvard have been examining this question, following 268 men who entered college in the late 1930s through war, career, marriage and divorce, parenthood and grandparenthood, and old age. Here, for the first time, a journalist gains access to the archive of one of the most comprehensive longitudinal studies in history. Its contents, as much literature as science, offer profound insight into the human condition—and into the brilliant, complex mind of the study’s longtime director, George Vaillant.
The Atlantic article includes a video interview with the lead researcher and a Q and A with Bradlee about being part of the study.
And here is an article from the Harvard Crimson written during the study’s early days.
When the seven observers working in the Grant Study have discovered which anthropological measurements, which psychological questions, which physical characteristics, and what factors of home and background are the important ones that go into the making of a man and his character, they man be able to draw up a formula which will easily and correctly guide a man to his proper place in the world’s society.
A few years ago, during a Friar’s Club Roast of Jerry Stiller, Jason Alexander explained that Jerry Seinfeld couldn’t attend because he had a prior commitment to fu@k a supermodel on top of a pile of cash. It turns out that’s not the whole formula (though it probably can’t hurt to throw it in there).
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