The Secret to Living Longer May Be Your Social Life
Susan Pinker · other · single
Psychologist Susan Pinker went to Sardinia to work out why the island has six times as many centenarians as the Italian mainland. It is not the sunshine and it is not the diet. What predicts survival best, she found, is the number of face-to-face relationships a person keeps up — and the ordinary, unremarkable daily contact that comes with them.
Why it’s here: Pinker is talking about everyone, not about women. It sits here because the risk she describes falls hardest on older women — the ones who outlive their partners, and on whom the work of holding a social circle together has usually fallen for decades anyway.
