Passages

 OPTIMISM: THE KEY TO A GOOD LIFE

A.

It's an age-old battle. Pessimists think optimists are foolish; optimists think pessimists

make themselves unnecessarily miserable. A lot of research has been done on this

issue in the last 30 years. Have we answered the question yet? Is the glass half-full or

half-empty? Optimistic people are happier than pessimists. When something bad

happens, optimists think of it as temporary, limited in its effect, and not entirely their

fault. Pessimists do the opposite. They consider the setback to be permanent,

farreaching and their entire fault. There are varying degrees of this, of course; its not

black or white. Most people fall somewhere between the two extremes. The main

difference between optimists and pessimists is how they explain setbacks to

themselves. Optimism and pessimism both tend to be self-fulfilling prophecies.

Pessimistic explanations tend to make people feel defeated — making them less likely

to take constructive action. Optimistic explanations, on the other hand, make people

more likely to act. If they think the setback is only temporary, people are apt to try to do

something about it, and because they take action, they make it temporary.

B_Using these definitions, researchers find that optimism contributes to good health and

pessimism contributes to illness. Chris Peterson was teaching a class in abnormal

psychology at Virginia Tech, when he told his students to fill out an Attributional Style

Questionnaire — a carefully designed test that determines a person's level of optimism

and pessimism. The students also answered questions about their general health,

including how often they went to a doctor. Peterson followed the health of his students

the following year and discovered that the pessimists had twice as many infectious

diseases and made twice as many trips to the doctor as the optimists. Later, Martin

Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania and two of his colleagues, using interviews

and blood tests, found that optimists have better immune activity than pessimists. The

study shows that university freshmen who participated in a workshop on cognitive

coping skills reported fewer adverse physical problems and took a more active role in

maintaining their health.

C.

In the study, incoming freshmen were asked to complete a questionnaire designed to

reflect their overall attitudes and coping behaviors. Seligman and Buchanan invited

those students identified as the most pessimistic to participate in the study. Students

were randomly assigned to attend either the 16-hour workshop or a control group.

Workshop participants learned to dispute their chronic negative thoughts as well as

learned social and work skills that can help avert depression. After an 18-month follow-

up, the preliminary findings showed that 22 percent of the workshop participants had

suffered moderate or severe depression by blind clinical diagnosis, compared with 32

percent of the control group subjects. Also, only 7 percent of the workshop participants

suffered from a moderate or severe anxiety disorder, compared with 15 percent of the

control group. Workshop participants also reported fewer health problems during the

course of the workshop, and were more likely than control subjects to see a physician

for maintenance or checkups rather than wait until they became ill. While the subjects

were young and generally healthy, Buchanan speculated the study could be replicated

using older more vulnerable subjects.

D_Studies by other researchers show the same thing. Why? One big factor is that

"pessimistic individuals," as Seligman writes, "get depressed more easily and more

often." When a person is depressed, certain brain hormones become depleted,

creating a chain of biochemical events that end up slowing down the activity of the

immune system. For example, two key players in our immune systems are T cells and

NK cells. T cells recognize invaders (like viruses) and make more copies of them to kill

off the invaders. Pessimists' T cells don't multiply as quickly as optimists' , allowing

invaders to get the upper hand; and NK cells circulate in the blood and kill whatever

they come across that they identify as alien ( such as cancer cells). Pessimists' NK

cells can identify alien entities, but they don't destroy them as well as the optimists' NK

cells. Optimists also look at information in more depth to find out what they can do

about the risk factors.

E.

In a study by Lisa Aspinwall, PhD, at the University of Maryland, subjects read

healthrelated information on cancer and other topics. She discovered that optimists

spent more time than pessimists reading the severe risk material and they remembered

more of it. "These are people," says Aspinwall, "who aren't sitting around wishing things

were different. They believe in a better outcome, and that whatever measures they take

will help them to heal." In other words, instead of having their heads in the clouds,

optimistic people look. They do more than look, they seek. They aren't afraid to look

into the situation because they're optimistic. Thus, for yet another reason, optimists are

likely to be healthier. And it is also true that the better their health, the easier it is for

them to maintain an optimistic outlook. And every effort they make to keep an optimistic

attitude will reward them with a stronger immune system.

F.

The best news is what research has shown repeatedly: anyone can become more

optimistic with effort. Pessimists can learn to see the temporary aspects of setbacks.

They can be more specific about the effects of it, they can learn to not take all the

blame and they can learn to take credit for the good they do. All it takes is practice Optimism is simply a way of thinking about good and bad; it's a cognitive skill anyone

can learn. So, what about the ageold conflict? Is the glass half-full or half-empty? The

best answer is that the glass is both half-full and half-empty, but you're much better off

if you think of it as half-full. When bad happens: assume it won't last long, look to see

what isn't affected, and don't indulge in self-blame. When good happens: consider its

effects permanent, see how much of your life is affected, and look to see how much

you can take credit for.