Toxic People Make Us Age Faster, Research by Irsay Scholars Shows

Stock Photo of a frustrated person. Adobe Stock.

Research by a team of Irsay scholars including Brea Perry and BK Lee continues to make waves outside the academy! Media far and wide are taking note of a study that examined “hasslers,” people in one’s close social networks who create problems and make life more difficult.

Brea Perry was interviewed on CBC/Radio-Canada. The Guardian, Psychology Today, the San Francisco Chronicle (subscription req’d), the Times of London, USA Today, U.S. News & World Report, and the Washington Post (subscription req’d) have all published stories on the research findings.

The paper at the center of all this, “Negative social ties as emerging risk factors for accelerated aging, inflammation, and multimorbidity,” published in PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences), found that the presence of each additional hassler in a person’s life hastens biological aging, all the more so when the hassler is a family member. The research findings identify negative social ties as chronic stressors that shape aging trajectories and underscore the need for interventions that reduce harmful social exposures to promote healthier aging.

Two of the other co-authors of the paper have Irsay affiliations — former visiting scholar Gabriele Ciciurkaite and former postdoctoral researcher Siyun Peng both contributed to the paper during their tenure at the Irsay.

This article was originally published on March 6, 2026. It was updated March 11, 2026 to include a radio interview with the CBC/Radio-Canada and articles in the Guardian, San Francisco Chronicle, Times of London, USA Today, U.S. News & World Report, and the Washington Post.