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Subscribe to RSSAmbitious, successful people who actually make it to the top not only are richer than the rest of us, but they apparently live longer, too, a new study shows.
Researchers found that ambitious people who achieve their goals live longer than those with average drive and determination. Making matters worse, they’re even a little happier than everyone else, according to a study to be published in the Journal of Applied Psychology.
“I guess you could say that those people got it all,” says the study’s lead author Timothy Judge, the Franklin Schurz Chair of Management at the University of Notre Dame. “Of course we don’t know what they did to claw their way to the top, but they took their aspirations and made good.”
Like most everything else, ambition does come with a dark side: climbers who don’t manage to scratch their way to the top are most likely to die younger, the researchers found.
Judge and co-author John D. Kammeyer-Mueller of the Warrington College of Business looked at data collected as part of a multi-decade study that followed more than 1,500 California children who had scored high on intelligence tests. The teens were followed for more than 70 years starting in 1922 by a Stanford psychologist named Lewis Terman.
The Stanford study looked at a wide range of topics, including the teens’ level of ambition. The study volunteers were asked about their physical and emotional development, school histories, recreational activities, home life, family background, as well as educational, vocational and marital histories. As the years passed follow-up surveys asked about the evolution of the participants’ careers, activity patterns and personal adjustment.
Judge and Kammeyer-Mueller looked at the impact of high and low ambition on death rates among study volunteers. They found that very ambitious people were more likely to die younger than those with less drive. Of those who scored among the top 10 percent on ambition more than 45 percent were dead by 1982, which was some 60 years into the study. The overall death rate for study participants at that point was 33 percent.
But things got more interesting when the researchers divided the ambitious volunteers into two categories: those who had fulfilled their life goals and those who had not. The death rate among those who achieved their ambitions was 31.7 percent, as compared to 46.7 percent among those who had not.
In other words, ambitious people who failed to achieve their goals tended to die younger.
Another just-published study in Japan found that hard-driving male managers and professionals there are dying younger than other men, apparently because they put work before their health.
Scientists who examined the death certificates of Japanese men who died between 1980 and 2005 found managers and professionals had a 1.7 times higher risk of dying before the age of 60 than those in clerical, sales, services, security, agriculture, production and transport jobs.
"Managers and professionals have higher stress and poor lifestyles, they don't have time for exercise, sleeping," said study leader Koji Wada at the Kitasato University School of Medicine, according to Reuters. "Even with higher wages, they have unhealthy lifestyles," Wada said.
One thing that might give us all pause: The American study found that people with the lowest ambition scores also were likely to live longer. By 1982 only 30 percent had died, compared with 33 percent for the overall group.
The moral of the studies may be: Don’t worry, be happy and you’ll live a longer life.
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Yawn, read the book with relation to genetic blessings. Again, man's knowledge is foolishness. Passing out dangling crystals for you're rear view mirror.
"Researchers found that ambitious people who achieve their goals live longer than those with average drive and determination. Making matters worse, they’re even a little happier than everyone else,"
Really? You're so jealous that seeing someone reach their goals and feel good about it "makes matters worse" for you?
May you and your children never reach your goals and never be happy because what if some jealous, insecure individual sees it and doesn't feel warm and fuzzy inside about it.
Keep the class-warfare rhetoric coming lamestream media.
Heres some scary reality - theres alot of random chance involved in who succeeds and who doesnt. We love to believe in the ideal that those who believe in themselves, are optimistic, are ambitious and keep their "eyes on the prize" succeed. Its as American as baseball and apple pie. But it is also hogwash. You increase your odds significantly by persevering and believing in yourself - but yaknowwhat? Bad things happen to good people, and vice versa.
Theres slackers that fall into good positions through being in the right place at the right time, and theres ambitious, intelligent, capable people who end up stuck in deadend jobs, or worse - underemployed, or even worse, unemployed, homeless... And a whole lot of it truly is dumb luck.
You could be living in the woods, down on your luck, and trip over the biggest gold nugget ever to be discovered and become rich. Or you could be on top of the world, accused for a crime you didn't commit and end up imprisoned for life.
Its just that random... we rely on the delusion that we have more control than we really do. To face the reality of the randomness of life is just too horrifying. We need these security blankets to continue to hope for a better tomorrow.
Aint all the wishful thinking in the world gonna change how random life really is. There are basic natural laws of physics, but thats about it. Everything else is a carp shoot.
pjam- The statement Making matters worse, they’re even a little happier than everyone else," is just intended to be a be a humorous statement. Chill!
I totally disagree, S-I-N. You make your own luck, especially when applied to your job. What is often perceived as "luck" is the ability to capitalize on an opportunity when presented with it. Lucky people don't wait for someone to give them opportunities on a silver platter - they see possibilities and make them happen.
Unlucky people sit and gripe about how lucky other people are.
"But it is also hogwash. You increase your odds significantly by persevering and believing in yourself.."
So, which is it? You can't say it doesn't matter and then say..but it matters if you persevere.
Success is not a lottery. You increase your odds SIGNIFICANTLY if you persevere to the point that something IS going to work out.
It's just getting caught for a crime in reverse. Sooner or later it's going to find you and it'll work out..Average time is 10 years for most people. If they aren't willing to put 10 years in a realistic goal..well, they get what they get.
and this is even WITH hardships along the way.
Here are two points for you geniuses:
(1) At what point do you cross from perserverance to wasting time/money/effort?
(2) What is the reward for hard work? More work.
So it's like this. 'Oh, I'm a failure. Might as well die.'
Same as if you are lost in the woods. The people that give up die. The people that are determined to live are found or walk out on their own.
It's your attitude in life that is going to save you or kill you.
Not at all, those of us that strive to succeed and move up feel more accomplished, rightfully so.
If you don't strive for greatness then you don't deserve anything great.
In other news water is wet. The rich can afford better medical care and are more likely to take care of themselves than poor depressed people.
agreed. they live longer because they can afford better medical care than the rest of us.
Its great to have that feeling of accomplishment when it comes to family and professional matters.
If you are a union slug who hates the world and places the blame on everyone else, happiness is going to elude you. That's no way to go through life.
CommonMan
You are so right!!!
I didn't see anything about union employees or union leaders in this study. Oh wait, your making it into a political statement just minus the evidence. Gotcha.
Dogma, I used unions as one example. You could also apply the analogy to OWS which is closely related to unions. They expect to be taken care without putting much effort forward. They will never be happy with what they get because they didn't earn it.
The last national survey stated that 70% of Americans think the country is going in the wrong direction. Unions account for 12% of the entire work force.
How do you account for the other 58% of unhappy Americans?
One more dumb azz article to keep obama from being the topic!!!!
Vote soros, van jones and obama OUT!!!!!!!
No thanks... because Santorum Gingrich Romney are just harbingers of the republican failboat party. More to come...
I started my job as an entry-level employee and worked my way to president and partner of the company within 6 years. The biggest problem I have now is that because I'm at the top there is nothing more to achieve. Since gaining the top position I've noticed that I'm not as happy as I was while working my way up. Ambition is definitely a two sided sword.
Quit and start over some where else.
Find something else other than the corporate ladder to succeed in. There are plenty of other worthy goals (and problems) in the world to pursue.
Dumbest article I've ever read!
The moral of this story is we are all going to Die. So try and enjoy life the best you can. Seize the day.
What's interesting is Fox has an article on the very same subject today, but by a different research group, and that article says that the ambitious are only "slightly" happier and they die younger.
I work in a field where who you know and how popular you are counts a lot more than hard work and talent, where often even the best get nowhere for all the effort.
"Making matters worse, they’re even a little happier than everyone else, according to a study to be published in the Journal of Applied Psychology."
Matting matters worse? How so? Sounds like jealousy to me. I say if a person is lawfully happy and successful, good for them. If they did it lawfully, they certainly didn't take anything from me, so you should have wrote "Even better", not "Making Matters Worse".
Compared to other Americans, I'm a person of below average means. Compared to the World, I'm in the top 5%. Therefore, I have nothing to be jealous about.
bonfire of vanities!!!!!
"You could also apply the analogy to OWS which is closely related to unions"
Yeah...not. Get a clue...
I was pretty ambitious when I started my 27 yr. career as a nurse...know what it got me? 12 hr. shifts...this article is for the one percent. Although I will say, what I do is far more rewarding than foreclosing on peoples homes.
I think it's more about the health and strength of our relationships--both with ourselves and with others that dictates the length of our lives...in addition to having ambition, as well as follow-through on our goals, and respect to feed and care for our bodies. If you're ambitious, and don't realize your full potential--it's due to having an unrealistic grasp of reality. If you're ambitious, but you put work before play, then you lose the balance. The key is being balanced, finding joy and play in our relationships to offset our stressors.