Researchers at Boston University and Harvard analyzed two long-running studies, one of nearly 70,000 women and one of over 1,400 men, tracking optimism scores against how long each person actually lived.
People in the most optimistic group lived 11 to 15 percent longer on average than those in the least optimistic group, and had 50 to 70 percent higher odds of living to age 85, after adjusting for health conditions and depression, with the link holding after diet, smoking and other habits were added.
Because optimism was measured just once at the start of each study, and both cohorts were mostly white and relatively well-off, it is not yet clear how well the finding generalizes, or whether raising someone's optimism later in life would add the same years. The researchers argue optimism is more changeable than genetics, which makes it worth testing directly rather than treating as fixed.
Read the original study
An optimistic outlook, tied to extra years.
Source
- Lee, L. O., James, P., Zevon, E. S., Kim, E. S., Trudel-Fitzgerald, C., Spiro, A., Grodstein, F., & Kubzansky, L. D. (2019). Optimism is associated with exceptional longevity in 2 epidemiologic cohorts of men and women. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 116(37), 18357–18362. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1900712116