Just last month a study found that men and women with a more positive attitude are less likely to develop a cold. Now another study supports having a smile on your face.
The Mayo Clinic Proceedings reported in December results from a North Carolina study that found optimists live longer than pessimists.
An optimist is defined as a person who does not let negative events, attitudes, outcomes affect them on a personal level. They do not allow one event to shape their opinion about themselves, other people, or the world in general. They like to say "the glass is half full".
A pessimist is the opposite. They have an overall negative view of the world, its people, and perhaps themselves. A negative event or occurance in their life only further supports their negative attitude. To a pessimist "the glass is half empty".
In the study researchers followed more than 7,000 men and women for an average of 40 years from the 1960's to present day.
Each person underwent personality testing to determine if they had more of an optimistic attitude or a pessimistic attitude or somewhere in between. For this study, about 23 percent were pessimists and about 13 percent were optimists. All others were somewhere in between.
Pessimists were more likely to die during the follow-up, by as much as 42 percent. This was true after accounting for other variables that may increase the likelihood of death.
So can having a negative attitude really increase your risk for dying, or even dying earlier? It is hard to say from this study alone, but the evidence is complelling.
True pessimism may be a hard personality trait to change but individuals who tend to be more negative may try to adopt a more positive attitude for some events in their life, or work to reduce stress in other ways to combat the negative attitude.
Posted by Dr. Christina Gutierrez on December 28, 2006 03:13 PM
