A new study by Berghofer Medical Research Institute has found that people who are strongly pessimistic about the future, compared to those who are not pessimists are at a greater risk of dying earlier. However, it was also found that being an optimist does not extend life expectancy.
Dr. John Whitfield, the lead researcher from QIMR Berghofer’s Genetic Epidemiology group said:
“We found people who were strongly pessimistic about the future were more likely to die earlier from cardiovascular diseases and other causes of death, but not from cancer,” Dr. Whitfield said.
Study participants who scored higher on the pessimism questionnaire were likely to die two years earlier, on average, compared to those with lower scores.
He further said:
“We found people who were strongly pessimistic about the future were more likely to die earlier from cardiovascular diseases and other causes of death, but not from cancer.”
Moreover,
“Optimism scores on the other hand did not show a significant relationship with death, either positive or negative. Less than nine percent of respondents identified as being strongly pessimistic. There were no significant differences in optimism or pessimism between men and women. On average, an individual’s level of either optimism or pessimism increased with age.”
It was also found that, “depression did not appear to account for the association between pessimism and mortality.”
The research collected data from almost 3,000 participants who completed the Life Orientation Test. The test was the part of a broader questionnaire that looked at the health of Australians over the age of 50, between 1993 and 1995.
The participants were asked to agree on a number of statements, including positive statements, for example, ‘I’m always optimistic about my future’ or negative statements such as, ‘If something can go wrong for me, it will’.
In addition to this, in October 2017, the details of the participants were crossed checked with the Australian National Death index, to find out the number of people that had died and the cause of their death.
It has been seen in previous studies that there is a correlation between optimism, pessimism and specific diseases, such as, stroke or cardiovascular diseases. However, most previous studies put optimism and pessimism on one scale.
People who received low scores on the pessimism questions were classed as optimists, however, according to Dr. Whitfield, this is not always an accurate reflection of people’s outlooks.
“Optimism and pessimism are not direct opposites,” Dr. Whitfield said.
“The key feature of our results is that we used two separate scales to measure pessimism and optimism and their association with all causes of death.
“That is how we discovered that while strong pessimism was linked with earlier death, those who scored highly on the optimism scale did not have a greater than average life expectancy.
“We think it’s unlikely that the disease caused the pessimism because we did not find that people who died from cancer had registered a strong pessimism score in their tests. If illness was leading to higher pessimism scores, it should have applied to cancers as well as to cardiovascular disease.”
The research findings further raised questions about the practical health benefits of training people out of pessimism.
“Understanding that our long term health can be influenced by whether we’re a cup-half-full or cup-half-empty kind of person might be the prompt we need to try to change the way we face the world, and try to reduce negativity, even in really difficult circumstances.”
