God really does have a sense of humor.
Nov. 26th, 2002 04:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
novapsyche'Tis Healthier to Give Than to Receive
That old adage about feeling good when you do something for someone else apparently has more than an emotional ring to it.
Engaging in even a scant amount of altruistic behavior increases longevity, a University of Michigan study has found.
The five-year examination of 423 older couples found that those who reported helping someone else even only once a year were between 40 percent and 60 percent less likely to die than those who reported helping no one at all during the previous 365 days.
"It really looked like it was whether you gave any help or not," says lead author Stephanie Brown, a psychologist at the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research in Ann Arbor.
That old adage about feeling good when you do something for someone else apparently has more than an emotional ring to it.
Engaging in even a scant amount of altruistic behavior increases longevity, a University of Michigan study has found.
The five-year examination of 423 older couples found that those who reported helping someone else even only once a year were between 40 percent and 60 percent less likely to die than those who reported helping no one at all during the previous 365 days.
"It really looked like it was whether you gave any help or not," says lead author Stephanie Brown, a psychologist at the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research in Ann Arbor.