Optimists Get Reward for Their Outlook: Better Health

The power of positive thinking may pack more of a punch than Norman Vincent Peale ever realized.

Peale and others have believed that a positive outlook can make people more successful in life. But two psychologists say optimism also may improve a person’s health and ability to overcome stress.

“If I were lost at sea in a lifeboat, I’d much rather be stuck with an optimist than a pessimist,” said Michael Scheier, a psychology professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

“I would expect an optimist to be able to row, and for a long period of time, because that person believes it will pay off. A pessimist would lay back in the sun, taking it easy, because he’d say, ‘What’s the use?’ ” said Scheier, who considers himself “slightly pessimistic.”

“People’s optimistic or pessimistic orientations . . . are not just faces we display to the world,” said Charles Carver of the University of Miami. “They have lots of implications for what people do, how they feel, and potentially they may have important health implications as well.”

It isn’t enough, though, to adopt a cheerier attitude about a particular situation and remain a pessimist about life in general. The psychologists say a person’s “global perspective” about life often has a greater influence on health and success than attitudes about a specific difficulty.

“We think generalized expectancies are most useful when the phenomenon being looked at either is influenced by a lot of factors or plays out over a long period of time,” Carver said.

Coping With Stress

“People who say everything is situation-specific could not account for our data,” Scheier said.

By developing a scale to measure optimism and pessimism, the two men were able to compare a person’s attitude to his ability to cope with difficulty. They discovered that people with a general sense of optimism handled stress better, recovered faster from coronary bypass surgery and were more successful in completing treatment for alcoholism.

In one study tracking the progress of 141 college students during the final four weeks of a semester, the psychologists found that optimistic students reported fewer symptoms of stress--muscle soreness, fatigue, dizziness, and coughs--than pessimistic students.

Another study examined the rate of recovery for 54 people who underwent coronary bypass surgery. Optimists showed fewer signs of complications during the operation, such as heart attack and the release of an enzyme associated with muscle damage, and they also recovered at a “significantly faster rate” than pessimists, Scheier said.

A third study Carver conducted with two psychologists in California tracked the progress of 54 alcoholics in a 90-day after-care program. Carver says the optimists were more likely than the pessimists to complete the program and stay sober.

Using Carver and Scheier’s personality scale, Dartmouth College psychology professor Jay Hull studied about 60 students taking a test and discovered that the pessimists experienced higher heart rates and blood pressure than optimists.

Richard Schulz, a University of Pittsburgh professor of psychiatry who used the same scale, charted the progress over a year of 170 people who had to care for stroke victims. He found that regardless of the progress of the patient, the optimistic care-givers were less depressed and healthier at the end of a year than their pessimistic counterparts.

“There is something that is important about positive thoughts in and of themselves,” Scheier said.

“If, when people confront difficulties in their lives, they believe the outcome eventually will be good, they’re more likely to obtain a good outcome than if they believe it will eventually be bad.”

Optimists Take Action

But good thoughts alone don’t make good things happen. Optimistic people are doers, concentrating on ways to solve difficulties, while pessimists are more passive, believing failure is inevitable, Scheier said.

“Optimists tend to be much more likely to engage in problem-focused coping. They formulate plans for action or have alternative plans if one goes wrong. They suppress competing activities and devote all of their attention to one problem,” he said.

“Pessimists are more likely to engage in emotion-focused coping. Rather than trying to deal with the problem per se, they turn to the feelings they’re having about the problem.”

In the bypass surgery study, optimists were more prone to make plans and set goals for their recovery and were less likely to dwell on their nervousness and anxiety, Scheier said. Pessimists tried to block out thoughts of what the recovery period might be like.

More Information

Hull found that pessimists also appeared to consider all information--both negative and positive--when confronted with difficulties, while optimists seemed to ignore bad news.

“Pessimists are more in tune with reality, but as a consequence of that, they could expose themselves to more information and be more stressed,” he said.

The two personality types differ more markedly in situations that are perceived as being uncontrollable, such as death, Scheier said.

“Optimists use acceptance resignation. They accept that nothing can be done and move on with their lives,” he said. “Pessimists tend to rely on denial. When you deny things, it’s not very adaptive, at least in the long run.”

The adage that pessimists see a glass as half empty and optimists as half full is only half true.

“The real question is, what are the odds of filling it up?” Scheier said. “An optimist will say, ‘Yes, we can fill that glass up.’ And the pessimist may say, ‘No, it’s going to evaporate and go away.’

“Optimism is more than reading the best into a situation. It’s also a matter of believing that really good things will happen.”

But can pessimists become optimists?

“I’ve been asking myself that question all my adult life,” Carver said.