Well Duh!

I’m always reading about some new study that claims to reveal something heretofore completely unknown to science or the intelligentsia.

Recently, I saw one that reported something maybe slightly interesting while another would likely make even the most unschooled rube exclaim, “Well, duh!”

The first study, which appeared in the Aug. 3 online edition of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, said researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University found many very old people – we’re talking 95 and older – had achieved that great age not by taking care of themselves but seemingly by NOT taking care of themselves.

The study followed 477 seniors between the ages of 95 and 112 in the college’s Longevity Genes Project, which aims to discover why some people live so long when the chances of reaching 100 are about one in 4,400.

The people in the study were found to be remarkably ordinary in their life habits – sometimes to the point of making extremely unhealthy choices. For example, one 107-year-old woman said she’d smoked for more than 90 years.

The key finding of the study? It’s not the choices you make in life that matter most. It’s primarily in your genes, fickle as they can be.

You either have great genes that can make you virtually indestructible (well, up to a point) or you don’t.

But hold on. Just because Uncle Louie made it to triple digits, it’s no guarantee you will. 

We all probably have someone in our family who never took care of his or her self and lived well past 90, while health-conscious, non-smoking relatives never made it to 80.

The study concluded that — even if you have a generally great gene pool — it’s apparently still a dice roll for each pool swimmer.

If that conclusion didn’t really surprise you, you may be even less impressed by the following one:

A study in the August issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science suggests the rich are in fact different from the rest of us and not just because they belong to country clubs and drive fancy cars.

The study found the rich are less empathetic, less altruistic and generally more selfish because of their more insulated life experience.

OK, here’s where we all say, “Well, duh!”

“We have done 12 separate studies measuring empathy in every way imaginable, social behavior in every way and some work on compassion and it’s the same story,´ said researcher Dacher Keltner in an article on msnbc.com. “Lower-class people just show more empathy, more pro-social behavior, more compassion, no matter how you look at it.”

I guess that seems obvious. If you’ve ever been poor or are poor, you can much more easily empathize with others rowing in the same boat, while those who  have always slurped martinis while sailing on their yacht have a much harder time — if they ever think about it at all.

Unlike the rich, lower-class people must depend on others for survival, the study said, helping them to read other people better, empathize more with others and give more to the needy.

In fairness to the upper classes, another study by researchers at Duke and Harvard universities found the rich may in fact be more clueless than downright selfish.

The research showed – regardless of political affiliation or income – Americans tended to believe wealth distribution ought to be more equal.

The problem was the rich tended to believe that was already the case.

Duh.

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