Can spending more time engaging with the humanities, similar to galleries, museums, singing or painting, really result in an extended and healthier life? It’s definitely an appealing idea. And it is not inexplicable.
Stress is bad in your health, and spending your free time doing something interesting, like going to an art gallery, looks as if a superb method to reduce stress. But there’s a giant difference between a plausible idea and a longtime scientific fact. And if scientists like me want. Advise people on how to spend their time.We must make sure that our advice relies on solid evidence.
A recent study, published within the journal Innovation in Agingpresents a working example. A study led by a team of UCL researchers has shown that folks who regularly engage in arts and cultural activities, and across a wide selection of such activities, appear to age more slowly in keeping with certain biological clocks.
Unfortunately, determining whether arts engagement actually improves your health and slows your aging is difficult. There are three important challenges.
First, it’s good to distinguish whether arts engagement causes gradual aging or whether rapid aging (and poor health) makes it difficult to have interaction in the humanities (an issue often known as “reverse causation”).
Second, it’s good to account for the undeniable fact that individuals who spend plenty of time with the humanities are generally very different from those that don’t. That is, they typically lead richer and healthier lifestyles (an issue often known as “confounding”).
And finally, it’s good to account for the undeniable fact that individuals who spend more time in the humanities are likely to have more leisure time. This means being very clear about what you might be comparing the time you spend engaging with the humanities to.
It seems plausible that visiting a gallery can be more stress-relieving than caring for a dying relative. But is it higher than going for a walk? Or spend more time sleeping? Without clear comparisons, it’s unimaginable to say whether spending time in the humanities is best than some other leisure activity.
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So how can we clearly study the causal effect of time spent watching TV on later health and aging in comparison with visiting galleries?
The classic approach can be to experiment. Take a big enough group of individuals and randomly assign them to one in all two groups, one encouraged to go to galleries and the opposite to look at TV.
The challenge is how do you motivate people – and can it work?
You will pay them. But any effect you saw wouldn’t represent the effect of independently watching TV in comparison with independently visiting a gallery.
A more popular option is to review samples of individuals participating in long-term research studies. But doing so would require frequent and detailed data on how people spend their time and their health, aging indicators and other characteristics. In theory, this may help you study how gallery attendance versus TV viewing increased, changing health or aging indicators, after rigorously accounting for the whole lot mentioned above.
What does the research actually show?
Unfortunately, most studies examining the consequences of the humanities on health and aging fall well in need of these requirements. A recent UCL study provides a textbook example. It examined the effect of arts and cultural engagement on biological aging without comparison.
So, at best, it studies the effect of spending more time on arts and cultural engagement. And it probably is not either, due to other problems of reverse causation and confounding.
Because the study had only one-time measures of arts engagement and aging, there isn’t any method to separate the consequences of arts engagement at a slower age from the consequences of rapid aging (and poor health) on arts engagement.
The study revealed some differences within the profile of those engaging in roughly arts activities. But only partially, several aspects were ignored – similar to wealth, childhood conditions and illness – and others were oversimplified (employment was represented by a straightforward yes/no variable).
Several vital lifestyle aspects, similar to smoking, alcohol consumption and body mass index (BMI) were also examined only as a secondary concern. When it was Calculate forvisible effects shrank by 30-80%. And, again, it was all oversimplified. For example, only smoking status was considered, not smoking amount.
In the resulting media coverage, the researchers noted that the humanities had effects of high versus low engagement. “Comparison of differences between smokers and nonsmokers”.and the lead creator suggested that the humanities must be promoted. “Like we promote 10,000 steps a day or five days of fruits and vegetables.”. If you smoke, I’m afraid that visiting just a few museums is unlikely to supply the identical life-changing advantages as quitting smoking.
For everyone else, by all means spend more time visiting museums, galleries, singing, or painting. Your life will probably be richer for it. But if you would like to live an extended, healthy life, there’s probably no alternative to increasing your physical activity, improving your weight-reduction plan and reducing your alcohol intake.
Authors of the Arts and Aging study were invited to reply. Their answer is: