Like most Gladwell related information, there's an anecdotal relationship between a town that doesn't have much heart disease and a subjective observation about its inhabitants' lifestyle.
However, I would suspect that self promotion is correlated with heart disease in general because people who have to self promote are under stressful conditions. They're trying to change things which they really have little control over: other people's minds.
I try to avoid that stress by looking for ways to succeed that don't require much self promotion. Part of that involves finding areas where you have enough edge that the benefit of other parties working with you is obvious. Admittedly not a very generalizable route, but I believe I'd be happy just trying as long as I don't have to bend to others' whims.
Very true about Gladwell. But I've picked up the original research too by Wolf and his book. It was Wolf's observation about what made Roseto like it is. Gladwell just restated it.
And as for the heart disease premise, you are totally right about there being a correlation that way. Which makes me curious though what would happen if we all just all stopped self promoting like you are trying to do. Would we all be just so much happier. On the blog right now someone brought up the example of Warren Buffet and how he doesn't do much self promotion. His results speak for themselves. And his website remains very stark.
I also thought of http://instapaper.com. A very popular and useful tool, and I can't find a review or testimonial on the entire stark, grey site. People just find out they need this tool and sign up. Even the itunes sales page - http://www.instapaper.com/iphone has nothing on it. No "Techcrunch calls it the best thing ever".
"Sounds very handy - Lifehacker.com
This is much quicker and cleaner - Hawk Wings
I came across toread.cc and I immediately fell in love with it - Winston's Attic"
Again, totally admitting we do this too. But this is so interesting to me that instapaper gets away without having to do this, and still commands quite an audience.
With 25,000 towns in the US, is there any surprise that you can find one with an unexpectedly {low,high} incidence of {heart disease,cancer} by pure chance?
This was particularly telling: "... But also leads to stress, ills, and unhappiness that didn't exist in Roseto. Well, until Roseto became just like every other town years later."
Ignoring this, let's look at the structure of this "case/control" setup. The "cases" with unexpectedly low heart disease are all from the same geographic region and environment. Many are related (up to 3 generations living in the same town).
The controls are... well, the rest of America, dispersed across hundreds of millions of acres in diverse environments and with a more diverse genetic background.
In other words, they inadequately controlled this experiment, so any assertions about the results are suspect.
What you say about the experiment results is true. I don't know if this one is any better, but the guy who gave this TED talk found similar results when looking for communities having people with the longest life spans:
One of the places with a lot of centenarians was a place near Okinawa, Japan, where people form life long friendships. They also eat healthy and I'm sure other variables are different. I find the correlations interesting even if they are not conclusive.
Maybe focus on what you're doing instead of what you've done. Be nice to people and find ways to help them out with their problems. Instead of listing out your credentials express your willingness to help.
This seems to be the approach that Richard Feynman took. He says in the BBC series "The Pleasure of Finding Things Out" that he hates the concept of awards, and he did things for the pleasure of doing it and having it used by others, not to earn some sort of recognition.
People cooking for neighbors. Everyone chatting with everyone else on the street. 3 generations of family living under one roof. And an "egalitarian ethos".
With 3 generations living together and everyone taking turns cooking for each other on an egalitarian basis, I'd expect to see more people eating home-cooked meals and less fast food and processed food products.
However, I would suspect that self promotion is correlated with heart disease in general because people who have to self promote are under stressful conditions. They're trying to change things which they really have little control over: other people's minds.
I try to avoid that stress by looking for ways to succeed that don't require much self promotion. Part of that involves finding areas where you have enough edge that the benefit of other parties working with you is obvious. Admittedly not a very generalizable route, but I believe I'd be happy just trying as long as I don't have to bend to others' whims.