![]() Optimistic people may have improved cardiovascular health. Optimism appears to be particularly good for your heart.One study of women with breast cancer, published in October 2022 in BMC Psychiatry, found that those who were more optimistic also reported fewer symptoms of anxiety and depression. Even in tough circumstances, optimism seems to support emotional wellness. Optimistic people may have better mental health.If that mindset sounds like one that promotes well-being, decades of research show that to be the case. ![]() “You can have that mindset while still being in a difficult time,” she adds. It’s the sense that things can improve and should likely work out, says Whitney Goodman, a licensed marriage and family therapist based in Miami. Other things that can influence how optimistic you are can include, according to a research review published in 2018 in American Psychologist: “This is a muscle that can be developed,” she says. That means there are things you can do to become more optimistic. The rest of what influences optimism - aside from this genetic component - has to do with your life circumstances and what you do on a daily basis, says Trudel-Fitzgerald. They also suggest that optimism is less heritable than other personality traits like neuroticism or extroversion, which are about 50 percent heritable, says Segerstrom. These findings suggest that the genes we inherit from our biological parents at birth do bear on how optimistic we are, but don’t explain it 100 percent. Because all siblings have overlap in their surroundings at home, comparing these groups helps researchers understand just how much of a role genes play when it comes to optimism.Īnother earlier twin study, published in Structural Equation Modeling: An Interdisciplinary Journal, pegged the genetic contribution at 20 percent. The data show that identical twins (who usually share 100 percent of their genetics) have more similar results on surveys measuring optimism compared with fraternal twins and non-twin siblings (who share only about 50 percent of their genetics). One study of teenage Dutch twins, published in February 2015 in the journal European Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, found that genetics accounted for 38 percent of optimistic tendencies. Just like most other psychological characteristics, nature (genetics and biology) and nurture (your surroundings) both contribute to dispositional optimism, says Segerstrom.Įxperts aren’t exactly sure how big of a role genetics play in optimism. Also called optimistic bias, unrealistic optimism refers to the way that we tend to expect good things to happen to us more often and bad things to happen less often than they do to others, explains Dr. Unrealistic OptimismĪt times, feeling hopeful about the future is part of a thought pattern that isn’t entirely logical - this is known as unrealistic optimism. And those with higher dispositional optimism are more likely to engage in explanatory optimism. Someone with low explanatory optimism will say their acceptance was just a lucky fluke, she adds.Įxplanatory optimism differs from dispositional optimism because explanatory optimism is a thinking pattern rather than a part of your personality - in other words, it’s a habit that can change through deliberate practice. On the flip side, you think bad things that happen to you aren’t necessarily your fault and won’t inevitably repeat.įor example, Trudel-Fitzgerald says that someone with high explanatory optimism who gets into grad school will attribute their good fortune to hard work and feel it bodes well for future career success. If you have high explanatory optimism, you’ll take good things that happen to you personally and feel confident they’ll keep happening, she says. Like the name suggests, this type of optimism has to do with how you explain why certain things happen to you, says Trudel-Fitzgerald. “As we go through life, through ups and downs, we’ll come back to our own level of optimism.” 2. “That means we all have a set point,” says Trudel-Fitzgerald. Unlike happiness and other emotions that ebb and flow throughout the day, dispositional optimism is essentially a personality trait and - unless you intentionally work at it - is mostly stable over time. When people with high dispositional optimism think about the future, they recognize they may face challenges, but ultimately believe they’ll figure things out, adds Trudel-Fitzgerald.
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