I saw this item about an actuarial study on the Reuters news feed today. The study was first published in 2001, in The Annals of Internal Medicine, but it pertains to the Oscars, whose ceremony was the other night. The study is still on-going, collecting data each year.
What data? Well, it turns out that getting an Oscar is good for your life expectancy. Really good.
Read on:
Dr Donald Redelmeier at the University of Toronto noticed a few years ago that the people bounding up on stage looked more than just upbeat. They revealed many, many of the "soft indicators" of good health that physicians look for in a general exam. He wondered of their might be a measurable indicator of this impression.
With sponsorship from Canadian Institute of Health and Ontario Ministry of Health, Dr Redelmeier looked at all 762 actors/actresses ever nominated for either Lead or Support Oscars. He was able to compare them to a another actor of similar age and gender in every film for which they were nominated.
The results are significant. The average life expectancy for winners is 79.7 years. The average for non-winners is 75.8 years, a 3.9 year difference. The extra 3.9 years is a big gap. To put this in perspective, the Reuters article pointed out that if all cancer cases in North America were cured, the improvement in life expectancy would be 3.5 years.
The gap, or effect, was similar for men or women, comedies or dramas, Leading actors or Supporting actors. But not for screenwriters... they averaged 3.6 years less life expectancy.
What does it mean? It is hard to prove a connection, but psychologists might suggest that the magnitude of the validation received gives lots of positive stress points. And maybe those chain-smoking, scotch-drinking, deadline obsessed screenwriter cliches are closer to truth than we thought?
Posted by The Naturalist at March 7, 2005 8:28 PM