The Study Confirms Our Beliefs, But More Work is Needed

Numerous studies have supported the widely shared belief that a youthful ability to control impulses usually leads to adult success. However, "developing self-control is not always an unalloyed good." [bold added]

Work published two years ago by Gene Brody of the University of Georgia, who looked at a group of young black Americans, showed that those who exhibited self-control as teenagers did indeed get the expected benefits. But if such self-controllers came from deprived backgrounds, they developed higher blood pressure, were more likely to be obese and had higher levels of stress hormones than their less-self-controlled peers. That correlation did not apply to people who started farther up the social ladder.

For certain populations stress and premature aging may be the price for reaching higher.

for people born at the bottom of the social heap, self-control speeds up the process of ageing. This research, just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, looked at DNA methylation, a phenomenon which involves the addition of chemicals called methyl groups to genetic material in chromosomes.

for people from high-status backgrounds, higher self-control meant lower cellular ages. For those whose background was low-status, the reverse was true. Their cells were ageing faster.

(Economist graphic)

A cautionary note: before we proclaim that success will shorten one's life, a look at the data is warranted (see graphic)

The conclusions are based on a "best fit" of data that measures the relationship of cellular age to childhood self-control, further subdivided into "privileged" and "disadvantaged" backgrounds. The relationship is not very powerful, and there are individuals in each quadrant (for example, high self-control/disadvantaged/low aging and low self-control/privileged/high aging). There seem to be a significant number of datapoints that contradict the hypothesis.

One is tempted to stop with the headline, because the study confirms our beliefs. In these cases especially, more work is needed.