This is a very serious study published in the scientific journal Pnas (Proceedings of the national academy of sciences) last February. While medical research has always primarily focused on the benefits of social interactions, this one focuses on their negative effects. This investigation, funded by the American National Institute on Aging and conducted by researchers at Duke University (in North Carolina), demonstrates that Spending time with an annoying person can not only have a detrimental impact on mood in the short term, but can also affect physical health in the long term.
That’s because “difficult” people to get along with lead to negative relationships that make you age faster, according to data collected from more than 2,000 people in Indiana. In addition to questions about their social relationships, study subjects were asked to provide saliva samples analyzed for changes in DNA indicative of biological aging. The analysis then made it possible to compare the aging rates of those who had problems generated by those around them and those who did not.
Furthermore, theThe authors of the study detect a “cumulative” effect: each additional annoying person in the circle of relatives corresponds to faster aging of around 1.5% and an older biological age of around nine months. In general, the results, summarize the researchers, highlight the disorders and the need to reduce harmful social exposures.
Many are family members
“We don’t know if annoying people are really the cause of accelerated aging,” says Byungkyu Lee, associate professor of sociology at New York University and lead author of the study. However, “itWhat we observe is a sort of association between the presence of annoying and problematic elements in one’s social network and the pace of aging. The study also revealed that “many of these annoying elements are family members,” notes the expert. “People rooted” in the lives of those who experience them “in a way that is difficult to renegotiate or escape.”
On the non-family side, panel participants reported that coworkers, roommates, and, to a lesser extent, neighbors were more likely to be harassers than friends.
