What's more interesting is that the word "success" doesn't appear in the title or abstract at all, the functional word is "eminent", and their definition is definitely more complex than your summary:

"Eminent individuals were defined as those who, by age 50, had accomplished something rare: creative and highly impactful careers (e.g., full professors at research-intensive universities, Fortune 500 executives, distinguished judges and lawyers, leaders in biomedicine, award-winning journalists and writers)."

Yep, I really don't think that makes it better (can anyone explain why it is always psychologists who invent these kind of measures? Is there some test we can perform at age 13 so we can identify people who will go on to do this kind of research? A follow up paper perhaps, this will surely add to the "eminence" of the authors).

I have met my fair share of Fortune 500 executives, the majority are borderline braindead. Equally, I am unclear what "award-winning" journalist/writer might mean...it clearly doesn't mean success in any general way..."eminent" is just a very weird definition. Equating "eminent" with "highly impactful" and "creative"...dear God, are the authors actually human?

What is especially bizarre is this is a paper from psychologists who, presumably, should understand that equating success with other people thinking you are successful (which "eminence" clearly measures) is a fairly dysfunctional habit...the irony never ends.

>Eminent individuals were defined as those who, by age 50, had accomplished something rare

Absolutely every single person who achieves age 50 has done something rare.

The authors of the study (as professors themselves) simply measure their own biases here.

oooh touché

> In other cultures, it just means having friends/relationships and not being stressed all the time.

I’d love to watch you have a conversation with my Bangladeshi mom.

Bangladesh is not the only country with a culture!

I’d love to watch you have a conversation with a Chinese, Korean, Indian, Japanese, or Pakistani mom.

As a fellow-Asian, I usually like your contrarian commentary which brings 'our' experiences to this forum.

But I've gotta say, this is starting to seem like some variant of the good ole' days fallacy.

I had brown parents who spent countless hours teaching me maths, and stressing me out quite thoroughly when I didn't get it and when I had less than stellar grades.

Now an adult, and under medication to manage ICD/ADHD, I realize how all for naught all that stress was. More than that, I attribute my issues of having intimate healthy relationships to my eager brown parents who were never afraid to hand it to me when I fell short.

I think you're calling happiness success. Success in the form of an impactful career is important, not because it makes the person happy, but because it does more good for others than mere personal happiness. We've had thousands of years of people making friends with each other but almost never curing any diseases or improving quality of life in any lasting way until recently. The friends thing produces value that doesn't scale, so it's not as highly valued as, say, discovering new science which may help all future generations forever.

"In other cultures, it just means having friends/relationships and not being stressed all the time"

Sure, many people would say that's better or sufficient or whatever, but who calls that "success" who is not contrasting it with the grubby alternative of fame and fortune?

To me, you have defined basic mental health and implied that Americans don't value it, which is silly and offensive.

> In other cultures, it just means having friends/relationships and not being stressed all the time.

Could you share examples of such cultures that still exist?

Many European countries are like this, go visit somewhere like the south of Spain and it's a completely different lifestyle. There was an article here the other week about a country (Netherlands?) where you can take up to six months off work paid (at a lower salary) for burnout.

pretty much describes latin america. In colombia they have a saying "you don't need money when you have friends"

I suspect that psychometric tests would also be able to predict success in terms of having friends/relationships and living a low stress life.