Professional Documents
Culture Documents
JAMES HAMBLIN
National Academy of Sciences, Miller and Tianyi Yu, Edith Chen, and Gene Brody
build on their body of existing research showing that self-control among
disadvantaged youth is associated with poorer physical healthhigher blood
pressures, more body fat, and higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol
compared to peers who are more impetuous (and, then, less upwardly mobile).
We're talking about kids where the family is likely to be on multiple forms of
government assistance, often single-parent caregivers with a high-school
diploma or less, Miller explained to me. Those kidswho come from really,
really challenging backgrounds but nonetheless do well in terms of psychosocial
outcomesby their early 20s have cells that look quite aged relative to their
chronological age.
The eect is related to the idea that chronic stress breaks down every bodily
process and induces or at least catalyzes unknowably many diseases. The current
case, a familiar one, opens with 496 black teenagers in rural Georgia, most from
working-poor families. They are kids who begin with the panoply of
disadvantages, related to race, geography, classkids who, demographically,
dont do as well by traditional academic standards as others across the country,
have more problems with mental and physical health, and have more contact
with the juvenile justice system.
But there were outliers in that population, a subset of kids who despite the odds
being stacked against them, as the researchers put it, excelled in school,
exemplied mental health, didn't engage in criminal behavior or substance
abuse, et cetera. There's this group of kids that everybody is really excited
about, Miller said. They beat the odds, and that's absolutely fantastic.
As a psychologist, Miller brings an interest in the mindset that may have
facilitated that success, and at what cost it was enacted. Though none of that
excitement is meant to detract from the basic point that these odds ought ideally
not to exist. Instead playing elds are so far from level that they make for
Public policies shape the landscape on which goal-striving is practiced, and the
physiologic costs can be high, James told me. That's what the dierent
socioeconomic trajectories in this case are telling us. Some young people are
climbing mountains that are not so steep. Wealthy white folks aren't climbing a
mountain at all.
To James, the inuence of race and class on the slopes shown here is profound, a
reection of culture and dierential value placed on dierent people as a
function of physical appearance and some perceived state of being, known as
race. Researchers at Harvard School of Public Health recently found that the
greatest disparities between blacks and whites in sleep quantity were among
people with high-level professional jobs; that high socioeconomic status is
benecial in terms of sleep among whites but detrimental among blacks. The
healthiest in terms of blood pressure, obesity, and cellular aging, those are the
ones who aren't doing well in school, said Miller, the ones who are having
occasional run-ins with the law related to aggressive behaviors or substance
use.
In the most disadvantaged group, that means an almost full trade-o between
physical health and behavioral/educational barometers of success. So the kids
who followed the demographically normative path tend to be the healthiest,
even considering that relative poverty and lack of education are health risk
factors. The message could be to never be an outlier, but thats no message.
I do think the construct of self-control is an ambiguous one, and somewhat
problematic, James said. Because most people would say self-control is a good
thing. To say that in some circumstances it's not, that requires a little bit of verbal
jujitsu. It's the extreme unfairness of the circumstances in which people nd
themselves that's problematic, not the self-control.
With this work, researchers like Miller are drawing closer and closer to the
mechanisms that that lead to cardiometabolic disorders James sought to
understand as a student. It happens in young people who are doing their
damnedest to be successful, James says with consternation as visceral as it
reads in the words he wrote on the subject decades ago. This is what I came to
appreciate and be profoundly disturbed by. Were talking about people hardly
being given a chance to pursue their goals without having to pay with their
health. This is really, really important work.
HEALTH