Do jerks live longer because they are more stress free than nice people?

I just don’t think that stress is easily correlated with either trying to play nice or being a dick. Either choice can be work…whether it’s conscious or not. Stress totally plays a role in health, but stress is stress, separate from either of these types of characters.

But…I don’t really know if there really is an “Only the Good Die Young” phenomenon. It’s a song more than an expression of statistics.

I know some very stressed-out jerks.

“The good die young” at whatever age they die. That’s part of the point, see? “The good” are never with us long enough, it seems.

It’s similar to: “Good luck can’t last a lifetime unless you die young.” It’s an ironic truth.

I’m with @janbb on this one :)

@CyanoticWasp Good Point. :)
@janbb Also true. But maybe being a jerk minimizes the amount of stress they suffer from. Of course not for everyone else but for them it may. It just always seems that people who are especially sweet have cancer that repeat or some ailment that may do well for a while and then it rears its ugly head again. I can think of at least 15 people off the top of my head that have either died of a heart attack or cancer or a brain tumor that seemed rather healthy otherwise. Always seems to happen sudden, and then the family members they have that don’t take care of themselves have a host of problems and can be jerks, seem to go through life till a ripe old age.

I don’t think jerks suffer from less stress. I think they suffer from more stress, or else they wouldn’t be jerks.

No

When we get shoved into the old people’s home, we’re still jerks and someone (whether it be a nurse, another old fart, etc.) turns off our oxygen and tada! we just died from “natural causes.”

The good die young is an adage used to make people feel better about the loss of those they loved.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir Yeah – it never comforted me.

You know what? People die when they die. We had a question yesterday about why do bad things happen to good people? Bad things happen to all of us. There’s no discrimination.

“Only the good die young” is a lyric. It conveys a sentiment. It may or may not have anything to do with reality. I think the reasons why people die or live are far more complex than whether they are “good” or “bad”—judgments that are made by humans and have nothing to do with biology.

I believe that jerks get that way because they are more stressed than other people.

Well I believe it’s much tougher to be a good person than a jerk. Higher standards mean more responsibilities and more responsibilities mean more stress. Being held to higher standards is more stressful.