Longevity, success and friendship

A successful test career makes a cricketer live longer:

Cricketers who play regularly for England tend to live longer than those who make only a few appearances, a study has shown.
Research by the University of St Andrews reveals that cricketers who represented their country more than 25 times lived on average almost five years longer than those who played only a handful of Test matches. (Via Norm.)

This is consistent with two other findings - that Nobel prize winners live longer than mere nominees, and that Oscar-winning actors live longer than those who were nominated but never won (though this might not be statistically significant.)
What’s interesting here is that this effect seems independent of wealth and ordinary socio-economic status. The Nobel effect exists controlling for wealth. And Nobel nominees, actors with good careers, and men who play only a few tests (and some combine two of these), are by any objective standards, much more successful than the average. Many of us would give our right arm to play just once for England. Some have given the impression of having done just this.
This effect is also a different one from the finding of the Whitehall studies (pdf) showing that senior civil servants live longer than junior ones. That effect might be due to inequalities in power and control over one’s life. But there are no significant differences in power between cricketers with long test careers and short ones, or between nominees and winners of Nobels and Oscars.
So what’s going on here? One obvious possibility is that status and high acclaim boost health.
But there’s a finding which speaks against this - screen-writers who win Oscars seem to have shorter lives than mere nominees.
So, here’s a theory. One thing that matters for longevity is having friends. Most prize-winners are more like to attract these, ceteris paribus, than nominees. However, because their work is naturally solitary, Oscar winning writers don’t benefit from having more company - indeed, they actually lose it, because they tend to work more than non-winners.
So, maybe the message here is not that we should invest time pursuing career success, but rather that we should focus on making friends. 

Comments

[Igor Belanov]

If that's correct then most England cricketers from the late 80's, early 90's should be dead by now.

[Adrian Clark]

The message here is that we should acquire friends - but also that the successful have more friends, provided they are not succesful in a solitary field... So, ceteris paribus, success breeds friendships.

[gaddeswarup]

I doubt whether successful people have more friends. Is it possible that those with short cricketing careers suffered from disappointment, anxiety for recall etc? I know several academics (particularly in India)who did not get promotions they hoped for and ruined their health and often their work.

[Sam Z.]

These effects may be due to the reference groups which very successful, but just short of stellar, people compare themselves against.

A borderline test player probably feels pretty inadequate on a day-to-day basis, because he's constantly, explicitly compared with the very best. You see this effect in academia too, where very accomplished people at top tier institutions, who are nonetheless a little short of truly stellar, may be consumed with a sense of inadequacy, even a feeling of being an imposter (it's even got a name: "imposter syndrome") when they compare themselves with (e.g.) Nobel-level colleagues.

Sam.

[dearieme]

"But there are no significant differences in power between cricketers with long test careers and short ones": a hae ma doots. The chap with the long career may well feel much more confident and powerful when negotiating with his county. Ditto the Nobelist with his university - hell, at Berkeley they even get ther own parking, don't they?

[reason]

Why do you think longevity is a good thing. Having lots of friends and living a long time means going to lots of funerals.

[Innocent Abroad]

What's lacking is an analysis of longevity against friendship networks. I'm not sure that it's possible to have more than say a dozen truly close friends - friendship requires a time investment and that's a fixed commodity.

I would hope that close friendship does more for self-esteem than a large circle of acquaintances, but I wouldn't necessarily expect that to be true.