Optimism Can Add Years to Your Life
Some more positive news for the glass-half-full crowd
Things are looking up for optimists.
The most optimistic women live 5.4% longer than the least optimistic and have a greater chance of living into their 90s, according to a new study that adds to similar findings among women and men. The conclusion, based on 159,255 racially diverse women, appears to stick across many groups and has little to do with varying lifestyles, the scientists said.
“Although optimism itself may be patterned by social structural factors, our findings suggest that the benefits of optimism for longevity may hold across racial and ethnic groups,” said the study’s lead author, Hayami Koga, at PhD student at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
The results are detailed today in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.
A lot of factors play into whether someone is optimistic or not, from genetics to life history to current circumstances, so the new study can’t prove cause-and-effect. But much other research has yielded similar results, including this 2019 study of women and men:
Women who characterize themselves as having the highest levels of optimism live 15% longer than the least optimistic women and have a 50% greater chance of…
