编者按：本文改编自 Immaculata De Vivo与Daniel Lumera合著的《善良的生物学》（ “The Biology of Kindness”）
Source: pixabay.com
Humans are the most emotionally complex animals. Some people are optimistic by nature and are always full of emotions and positive and cheerful, while others are prone to pessimism and often have a negative and skeptical attitude towards life. In fact, emotions are not only the manifestation of human mental activity, but also the regulator of the human body to maintain balance. A growing body of scientific research proves that an optimistic mood can maintain health, prevent disease, and even slow down aging.
In 2019, Alan Rozanski, a cardiologist at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, USA, published a review in JAMA Network Open, comparing the results of 15 different studies involving 229391 participants. The study analysis showed that people with higher levels of optimism had a 35% lower risk of cardiovascular events and lower mortality.
"Optimistic people tend to take better care of themselves and have healthier daily routines, such as eating regularly, exercising, and not smoking. In the case of pessimists, the opposite is true, they always feel unhappy and thus ignore the little things in life. ”
Rozanski said optimism and pessimism are not arbitrary and elusive labels. Rather, they can be scientifically measured. By setting a baseline of data ranging from optimistic to pessimistic, researchers were able to quantify subjects' levels of optimism and verify their correlation with health status.
Studies have found that people with an optimistic mindset usually have a variety of positive health indicators, especially cardiovascular, pulmonary, metabolic and immunological. They have a lower chance of developing age-related diseases and a lower mortality rate. Correspondingly, pessimism is also damaging to health: elevated stress hormones such as cortisol and norepinephrine lead to higher levels of inflammation in the body, which stimulates the onset of disease. In addition, pathological pessimism can lead to depression. The American Heart Association considers depression to be a risk factor for cardiovascular disease.
图源: Immaculata de Vivo
Minor ailments such as the common cold are also associated with mood. A 2006 study outlined the personality traits of 193 healthy volunteers who had been vaccinated with common respiratory viruses. Participants with a positive attitude were less likely to develop symptoms of infection than those with a less positive attitude.
There was an interesting case. In 1998, French scientists conducted a survey of the correlation between mortality and mass events that inspired optimism. On July 12 of that year, the French national football team won the World Cup with a home victory over Brazil. Data on deaths from cardiovascular events recorded on that day showed a significant decrease in the number of deaths on that day compared to the average recorded between July 7 and July 17, and the impact was limited to the male group, with the number of deaths in the female group remaining largely unchanged. Although, such an independent event does not directly establish a clear causal link. But this strange coincidence suggests that the optimism that the team inspires after a win may have played a role in reducing the mortality rate.
Optimism is one of the most interesting non-biological factors in the mechanism of longevity. It links the mental attributes of an individual with physical health. In this sense, optimism is the most advantageous tool for us to stay healthy.
Research led by Harvard University's Lewina Lee came to the same conclusion: optimists tend to live longer. The study analysed data from 69,744 women in the UK's NHS and 1,429 men from the US Department of Veterans Affairs' Ageing Study. The results show that optimists tend to live 11 to 15 percent longer on average than pessimists and have a good chance of achieving "extraordinary longevity" – over 85 years.
The study concluded that these results were not affected by other factors such as socioeconomic status, general health, social integration, and lifestyle. Because optimists are better at dealing with life's difficulties, they will face them confidently and positively when faced with difficulties, while pessimists are more likely to feel frustrated and tend to let go and eventually fail to achieve their goals. So, optimism and pessimism are seen on a larger scale as an attitude, not just towards a single goal, but also as an attitude towards the future.
Researchers looked at the relationship between these two attitudes and the real-life results and found that optimists were more likely to achieve goals, such as completing college. Not because they are smarter than others, but because they are more motivated and persevering, able to manage work, life, socialize better, and flexibly adjust the use of resources.
Positive psychologist Martin Seligman once conducted a very famous study of a college swim team in 1990. Coaches ask athletes to compete at their best. At the end of the game, the players were told that they were about two seconds slower. The results of this false report were carefully set by the researchers to be both convincing and frustrating enough for the team members.
After a few hours of rest and reflection on his poor results, the swimmer was called to compete in the second competition. The results are markedly different between optimists and pessimists. The average score of pessimists was 1.6% slower than the first time, while the pace of optimists increased by 0.5%. This shows that optimists tend to use failure to motivate themselves to do better, while pessimists tend to be more easily discouraged and give up more easily.
Not only that, but the results of DNA studies seem to confirm that optimism can also slow down cellular aging.
The shortening of telomeres, the protective cap at the end of the chromosome, is a biomarker of cellular senescence. In 2012, Elizabeth Blackburn, who won the Nobel Prize for discovering an enzyme that supplements telomeres, and Elissa Epel of the University of California, San Francisco, among others, found a correlation between pessimism and accelerated telomere shortening in a study of menopausal women. They found that pessimistic attitudes may indeed be related to shorter telomeres.
Coincidentally, in 2021, a joint study from Harvard University, Boston University, and Ospedale Maggiore in Milan, Italy, looked at telomeres in 490 elderly veterans and found that subjects with a strong pessimism had shorter telomeres.
Research suggests that only 25% of people are born with optimism and are genetically determined. For others, optimism is the result of a deliberate effort to practice social relationships or learn more positive thinking.
"Optimism is like a muscle, it can be made strong through training. Rozansky says the first step in learning to be optimistic is to learn to control ourselves when negative thoughts bother us and try to change the way we look at things. Consciously cultivating a positive outlook on life can be a powerful tool for us to build social resilience, manage stress, and even prolong life, allowing ourselves to face challenges with greater confidence.
Bibliography:
https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/the-new-science-of-optimism-and-longevity/