This analysis echoes the findings of the study highlighted in the article in Science: across all age groups, genders, and ethnicities, strong social connections were associated with increased odds of living longer. In fact, Holt-Lunstad and her colleagues quantified the association: incredibly, social connection increased the likelihood of surviving in any given year by more than 50 percent. Across all of these studies, the mortality rate of individuals with the fewest ties was between 2.3 (men) and 2.8 (women) times higher than that of individuals with the most ties. These are very large associations, comparable to the effect of smoking on getting cancer. And smoking, in the United States, is considered the leading cause of preventable death.

When you’re lonely, it hurts. And we don’t mean that metaphorically. It has a physical effect on the body. Loneliness is associated with being more sensitive to pain, suppression of the immune system, diminished brain function, and less effective sleep, making an already lonely person even more tired and irritable. Recent research has shown that for older people loneliness is twice as unhealthy as obesity, and chronic loneliness increases a person’s odds of death in any given year by 26 percent. A study in the U.K., the Environmental Risk (E-Risk) Longitudinal Twin Study, recently reported on the connections between loneliness and poorer health and selfcare in young adults. This ongoing study includes more than 2,200 people born in England and Wales in 1994 and 1995. When they were 18, the researchers asked them how lonely they were. Those who reported being lonelier were more likely to experience mental health problems, to engage in risky physical health behaviors, and to use more negative strategies to cope with stress. Add to this the fact that a tide of loneliness is flooding through modern societies, and we have a serious problem. Recent stats should make us take notice.

Here is where Emmy Werner’s research, our own Harvard Study research, and many other pieces of research from across cultures and populations converge to show that a critical link between childhood experience and positive adult social connections is our ability to process

emotions.

It is from our relationships as children—especially our relationships with our family—that we first learn what to expect from others. This is when we begin to develop the emotional habits, so to speak, that will be with us for the rest of our lives. These habits often define the way we connect to others and our ability to engage others in mutually supportive ways.

A crucial point here is that our ability to process emotions is malleable. In fact, managing emotions is one of the things we actually get better at as we grow old. And there is strong evidence that we don’t have to wait until late in our lives for this to happen. With the right guidance and some practice, we can learn to be better at managing our feelings at any age.

If we feel disconnected from others at work, that means we feel lonely for the majority of our waking hours. This is a health concern. As we’ve mentioned elsewhere, loneliness increases our risk of death as much as smoking or obesity. If we find ourselves feeling lonely at work, it may be up to us to create opportunities for social connection to the extent that we can. For parents raising their kids at home, play dates or visits to a local park (which are often as much for the parents as for the kids) can be restorative. For warehouse workers, there may be opportunities to connect with people directly before a shift, or directly after.

The power of friendship isn’t just the stuff of anecdotes or philosophical observation; science has clearly shown this effect. Friends diminish our perception of hardship—making us perceive adverse events as less stressful than we might otherwise see them—and even when we do experience extreme stress, friends can diminish its impact and duration. We feel the stress, but with the help of friends we’re better able to manage it. Less stress and better stress management lead to less wear and tear on our bodies.

Friends, in short, keep us healthier.

In Chapter Two we discussed a 2010 review conducted by Julianne Holt-Lunstad and others that brought together 148 studies and a vast amount of data to analyze the effect that social connections have on health and longevity. Among those 148 studies were a number that focused specifically on friendship. Here are a few that make the point:

• A large longitudinal study in Australia found that people over 70 with the strongest network of friends were 22 percent less likely to die during the study period (ten years) than those with the weakest network of friends

• A longitudinal study of 2,835 nurses with breast cancer found that women who had ten or more friends were four times more likely to survive than women who had no close friends.

• A longitudinal study of over 17,000 men and women between the ages of 29 and 74 in Sweden found that stronger social connections decreased the risk of dying from all causes by almost a fourth over a period of six years.