What makes you live longer? What makes life more satisfying? What enables people to resist addiction?
These three questions have an answer in common--a remarkably good piece of news about which we should continually remind ourselves.
One piece of evidence to support our answer was produced by Lewis Terman, an educational psychologist at Stanford University, who developed the modern IQ test in 1916. Terman believed intelligence was inherited, and he was associated with the eugenics movement.
But our answer has nothing to do with IQ, nor the damaging notion of genetic determinism. Instead, it's about something quite different that Terman discovered despite his prior beliefs.
In 1921, Terman and his colleagues started a study built around IQ. Originally titled The Genetics Studies of Genius, it evolved into the Terman Study of the Gifted (it's also now known as The Longevity Project), and comprises the longest study of individual lives ever conducted.
