Friedman and Martin begin chapter 4 by discussing the relationship between cheerfulness and long life. There is an ever-present myth that happiness is a predictor of longer life, and this chapter delves into various factors that influence health. Like many other personality traits in this book, it turns out that happiness is not the sole predictor of long life and is instead intertwined with many other factors. There is little evidence to suggest that happiness directly influences one to have a longer life, especially because those who are happy usually are healthy as well. On page 41, Friedman and Martin wrote that “happiness and health often shifted in parallel.” For example, patients suffering from cancer or alzheimer’s disease may have poorer moods than those without disease. Looking at it this way, surely it’s not poor mood influencing their lifespan, but rather the disease itself. An interesting point that was made is that optimism has short-term effects, but not necessarily long term ones. For example, an optimistic mindset may motivate an ill patient to engage in healthy behaviors to improve his or her condition, but having too much optimism may leave someone dejected or disappointed when encountering hardships.
The chapter also mentions the connections between agreeableness and longevity. Personally, I tend to be a pretty agreeable person and am able to make compromises and get along with most personality types. According to the book, “being agreeable is not a secret to long life” (46). Instead, other factors such as having good social relationships turn out to be more important. As it turns out, my agreeable personality tends to cause people to gravitate towards me. In my group of friends, I’m usually the “advice giver” because of my non-judgmental an accepting nature. Since those who are more agreeable are more likely to have good social relationships, the two factors go hand in hand. Because of this, it’s easy to think that agreeableness is directly correlated to having a longer life, but the book does a good job of pointing out that there are other variables that we should pay attention to, because human life is complex and there is never a direct answer.