Contents
Children from low-income families often achieve outstanding success – but the need to constantly overcome difficulties can take a toll on their health.
According to statistics, children from poor families in the United States receive the worst education, they have more health problems and they commit more crimes. To remedy the situation, a program was implemented in society to develop young people from low-income families of personal qualities – self-control, optimism and perseverance. The main goal of the program was to help young people avoid the temptations that prevent them from setting and achieving goals.
Read more:
- “The main thing is to set the right goal”
However, a new study by researchers from Northwestern University (USA) has shown that overcoming these obstacles can affect physical health, especially when factors such as discrimination interfere with a person. “New evidence suggests that self-control, while promoting resilience and academic success, may have a negative impact on health,” said study lead author, psychologist Gregory E. Miller.
The authors of the work studied about 300 African American adolescents from rural areas. They found that adolescents who had a high level of self-control and the ability to concentrate on the implementation of long-term plans, in early adulthood, were more psychologically well off on a number of criteria. They were less prone to depression, substance abuse, and less aggressive—regardless of factors such as gender, family income, and education.
Read more:
- Kaizen: a plan to achieve the goal
The scientists also measured participants’ levels of cell aging – how “old” they look compared to a person’s calendar age. Cell aging reflects health problems. “We saw that in psychologically well-off young people with high self-control, cells were often “older” than their calendar age. It seems that maintaining self-control for the sake of future success does not pass without a trace for the body. This is most evident among young people from the poorest families. People from a rather unfavorable environment in search of a better life have to overcome many obstacles – bad schools, family obligations, social expectations, says Gregory Miller. “For African Americans, these problems are especially acute.”
Researchers suggest that the need to constantly control oneself and overcome difficulties wears out the body, affecting metabolism and causing increased production of stress hormones.
Подробнее см. G.E. Miller et al. «Self-control forecasts better psychosocial outcomes but faster epigenetic aging in low-SES youth», Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, July 2015.