Positive effects of pessimism

Mayo Clinic Study: Optimists Report Higher Quality of Life
A Mayo Clinic study indicates that optimists report a higher level of physical and mental functioning than their pessimist counterparts.

"How you perceive what goes on around you and how you interpret it may have an impact on your longevity, and it could affect the quality of your later years," says Toshihiko Maruta, M.D., of the Mayo Clinic Department of Psychiatry and Psychology in Rochester, Minn., and the principal author of the study.

Patients originally assessed in the 1960s with a personality test completed a follow-up self-assessment of their health status 30 years later. In the health survey, pessimists reported poorer physical and mental functioning. The results come two years after another Mayo Clinic study of the data found that optimists live longer than pessimists do.

Researchers looked at the health survey results reported by 447 patients during the 1990s. This group had originally completed the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) between 1962 and 1965. The MMPI is an assessment that helps researchers classify personality traits.

Using the MMPI scale of optimism and pessimism, Maruta and his colleagues classified 101 as optimistic, 272 as mixed, and 74 as pessimistic.

The researchers found that pessimists scored below optimists on quality-of-life assessments. Participants also scored lower than the national average on five of the eight scales that were measured: physical functioning, physical role limitations, bodily pain, general health perception, vitality, social functioning, emotional role limitations, and mental health.

"Our study provides documentation for beliefs commonly held by patients and health-care practitioners about the importance of optimistic attitudes," Maruta says.
The study appears in the August 2002 issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings.

In his recent bestseller Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman described the profoundly negative effects that habitually pessimistic attitudes can have in the workplace. For example, he points to one study that found that people who had chronic feelings of pessimism, anxiety and hostility had double the risk for asthma, ulcers, heart disease, etc. Pessimism seems to be as toxic as smoking or high cholesterol is for heart disease.

He also discusses two studies by psychologist Martin Seligman, who found that optimistic sales people sold anywhere from 37% to 57% more life insurance than their more pessimistic colleagues. So pessimism can have a negative effect on our financial health as well.

SOLUTION: In his book Learned Optimism, Seligman reported that optimism can be taught; we don't have to be "born" pessimists. He uses a technique called cognitive restructuring that involves identifying the kinds of negative habitual thoughts we have and choosing to change them. For example, you might think "I'll never be good enough" after a sales prospect says "no" to you. This kind of negative thought will cause you to feel depressed. You can challenge the negative thought by asking, "How do I know that I'll never be good enough?" Once you realize that there is no rational basis for this thought, then you can choose to replace it with the more optimistic thought, "I'll do better next time." Focusing on that new thought will change your negative mood into a more positive one.
Michael H. Smith, Ph.D.
Oakland, CA 94605

and now see the glass as "half full", instead of "half empty" as before.