Do Oscar winners live longer?
.
A few years ago, Donald Redelmeier, an epidemiologist at the University of Toronto, led a study of Academy Award-winning actors. His hypothesis was that having an Oscar gave people more control over their stressful careers. Instead of being forced to accept bad roles or work on mediocre movies just for the money, these stars could pick and choose their parts. This creative control, in turn, would lead to improved health outcomes. Redelmeier compared the award winners to two groups: (1) actors who had appeared in the same film as a nominated actor and didn’t get a nomination and (2) actors who had been nominated for an Academy Award but never won. The results were clear: People with Oscars lived, on average, four years longer than their less-successful peers, which represented a 28 percent reduction in death rate. As Redelmeier notes, this longevity boost is roughly equal to the effect that would come from “curing all cancers in all people for all time.”
This is from a piece in Wired Magazine by the always interesting Jonah Lehrer. I encourage you to read the whole thing. It covers the very interesting work of Stanford professor Robert Sapolsky.
I’ve posted about Sapolsky’s work before here, here, and most interestingly with this post: What’s the historically important connection between chair upholstery and heart disease?
Related posts:
What’s the secret to winning an Oscar for acting?
