Psychology's Marc Schulz Speaks at Center on Capitalism and Society Event
Professor of Psychology Marc Schulz was one of 15 speakers, a list that included three Nobel Prize winners, at the annual conference for The Center on Capitalism and Society at Columbia University.
Schulz is the associate director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development. Launched In 1938, The Study of Adult Development is a longitudinal study that has been following two generations of participants from 724 families to identify the psychosocial predictors of healthy aging. The initial study was made up of two groups of participants: The Grant Study that is 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 first-of-its-kind study set out to approach the study of human life in a radically new way, focusing on what makes us healthy rather than what makes us sick. Since then, thousands of participants, including children of the original participants, have answered lengthy questionnaires, and hundreds have had their blood drawn and their brains scanned, and have been interviewed regularly by study researchers. Data collected over decades reveal the broad and enduring power of relationships in shaping our health and longevity.
Schulz and Robert Waldinger, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and director of the study, recently co-authored The New York Times Bestseller, The Good Life: Lessons from the World’s Longest Scientific Study of Happiness.
Many Bryn Mawr students have done thesis research with data from the study and others have been involved in ongoing waves of data collection with children of the original study participants. Students regularly get to use de-identified data from the Harvard Study of Adult Development in classes Schulz teaches for the Data Science program, including a class on Quantifying Happiness.