Howard Friedman - The Longevity Project

For more about risky families see R. L. Repetti, S. E. Taylor, and T. E. Seeman, “Risky Families: Family Social Environment and the Mental and Physical Health of Offspring,” Psychological Bulletin 128 (2002): 330-66.

You can read more about our findings on family environment and parental divorce in L. R. Martin, H. S. Friedman, K. M. Clark, and J. S. Tucker, “Longevity following the Experience of Parental Divorce,” Social Science and Medicine 61 (2005): 2177-89.

For further research on effects of divorce over time see P. R. Amato, L. S. Loomis, and A. Booth, “Parental Divorce, Marital Conflict, and Offspring Well-Being during Early Adulthood,” Social Forces 73 (1995), 895-915.

For more on possible genetic contributions to outcomes following parental divorce see B. M. D’Onofrio, E. Turkheimer, R. E. Emery, W. S. Slutske, A. C. Heath, P. A. Madden, and N. G. Martin, “A Genetically Informed Study of the Processes underlying the Association between Parental Marital Instability and Offspring Adjustment,” Developmental Psychology 42, no. 3 (2006): 486-99.

For more on the K ration see Franz A. Koehler, “Special Rations for the Armed Forces, 1946-53,” QMC Historical Studies, Series II, No. 6, Historical Branch, Office of the Quartermaster General, Washington, DC, 1958.

For one of our studies of physical activity, see M. L. Kern, C. A. Reynolds, and H. S. Friedman, “Predictors of Physical Activity Patterns across Adulthood: A Growth Curve Analysis,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (in press, 2010) .

The Mark Twain quotes are at http://www.pbs.org/marktwain/learnmore/writings_seventieth.html.

Read more about patterns of physical activity over time in H. S. Friedman, L. R. Martin, J. S. Tucker, M. H. Criqui, M. L. Kern, and C. Reynolds, “Stability of Physical Activity across the Lifespan,” Journal of Health Psychology 13 (2008): 966-78.

Neil Armstrong made this comment in an interview with news anchor Walter Cronkite, included in L. Eisenberg’s Fifty Who Made the Difference: A Celebration of Fifty American Originals (New York: Random House, 1984).

To read more about METs and differences among groups, see M. A. Martinez-Gonzalez, J. A. Martinez, F. B. Hu, M. J. Gibney, and J. Kearney, “Physical Activity, Sedentary Lifestyle and Obesity in the European Union,” International Journal of Obesity and Related Metabolic Disorders 23 (1999): 1192-1201.

For a study of the B vitamins, see C. M. Albert, N. R. Cook, J. M. Gaziano, E. Zaharris, J. MacFadyen, E. Danielson, J. E. Buring, and J. E. Manson, “Effect of Folic Acid and B Vitamins on Risk of Cardiovascular Events and Total Mortality among Women at High Risk for Cardiovascular Disease: A Randomized Trial,” Journal of the American Medical Association 299, no. 17 (2008): 2027-36.

This study of aspirin and heart attack is H. D. Lewis, J. W. Davis, D. G. Archibald, W. E. Steinke, T. C. Smitherman, J. E. Doherty, H. W. Schnaper, M. LeWinter, E. Linares, J. M. Pouget, S. C. Sabharwal, E. Chesler, and H. DeMots, “Protective Effects of Aspirin against Acute Myocardial Infarction and Death in Men with Unstable Angina: Results of a Veterans Administration Cooperative Study,” New England Journal of Medicine 309, no. 7 (1983): 396-403.

To read about Holmes and Rahe’s original scale see T. H. Holmes and R. H. Rahe, “The Social Readjustment Rating Scale,” Journal of Psychosomatic Research 11, no. 2 (1967): 213-18.

For further reading on our initial study of marital history and long life, see J. S. Tucker, H. S. Friedman, D. L. Wingard, and J. E. Schwartz, “Marital History at Midlife as a Predictor of Longevity: Alternative Explanations to the Protective Effect of Marriage,” Health Psychology 15 (1996): 94-101.

From H. L. Mencken, A Little Book in C Major (New York: John Lane, 1916), 14.

For a discussion of marriage and happiness see R. E. Lucas and A. E. Clark, “Do People Really Adapt to Marriage?” Journal of Happiness Studies 7 (2006): 405-26.

The South Carolina study is described in D. A. Sbarra and P. J. Nietert, “Divorce and Death,” Psychological Science 20 (2009): 107-13.

Our study of marital patterns is J. S. Tucker, J. E. Schwartz, K. M. Clark, and H. S. Friedman, “Age-Related Changes in the Associations of Social Network Ties with Mortality Risk,” Psychology and Aging 14, no. 4 (1999): 564-71.

Regarding marital happiness, see L. Vie, M. L. Kern, C. A. Reynolds, and H. S. Friedman, “Marital Happiness as a Predictor of Healthy Aging,” presented Nov. 20, 2009 at the Annual Scientific Meeting of the Gerontological Society of America, Atlanta, Ga.

For an overview of studies on marriage and health, see J. K. Kiecolt-Glaser and T. L. Newton, “Marriage and Health: His and Hers,” Psychological Bulletin 127, no. 4 (2001): 472-503.

Ibid.

The Terman “orgasm adequacy” phrase is from L. M. Terman and M. H. Oden, Genetic Studies of Genius , vol. 4, The Gifted Child Grows Up: Twenty-five Years’ Follow-up of a Superior Group (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1947), 249.

61 Our study of sexual activity and long life is D. R. Seldin, H. S. Friedman, and L. R. Martin, “Sexual Activity as a Predictor of Life-Span Mortality Risk,” Personality and Individual Differences 33 (2002): 409-25.

62 For other studies on sexual activity and health see G. D. Smith, S. Frankel, and J. Yarnell, “Sex and Death: Are They Related? Findings from the Caerphilly Cohort Study,” BMJ 315 (1997): 1641-44; and H. K. Chen, C. D. Tseng, S. C. Wu, T. K. Lee, and T. H. H. Chen, “A Prospective Cohort Study on the Effect of Sexual Activity, Libido and Widowhood on Mortality among the Elderly People: 14-Year Follow-up of 2453 Elderly Taiwanese,” International Journal of Epidemiology 36 (2007): 1136-42.

For an interesting article about Edward Dmytryk, see Richard English, “What Makes a Hollywood Communist?” Saturday Evening Post , May 19, 1951. For his New York Times obituary, see “Edward Dmytryk, Film Director, Dies at 90,” July 3, 1999. His 1978 autobiography is It’s a Hell of a Life but Not a Bad Living (New York Times Books).

For an overview of personality, immunity, and disease, see H. S. Friedman, “The Multiple Linkages of Personality and Disease,” Brain, Behavior, and Immunity 22 (2008): 668-75. Also see M. E. Kemeny, “Psychoneuroimmunology,” in Foundations of Health Psychology , ed. H. S. Friedman and R. C. Silver, 92-116 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).

The Terman quote is from Terman and Oden, Genetic Studies of Genius , vol. 4, The Gifted Child Grows Up , 314 (Stanford University Press, 1997).