This Is Your Brain on Optimism

[Guest guest]

This Is Your Brain on Optimism

New research reveals the biological roots of positive thinking. How

a rosy outlook can affect your health.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/61572

We humans tend to be an optimistic bunch. In fact, it's long been

established by psychologists that most people are likely to be

irrationally positive. The optimism bias, as it's called, accounts

for the fact that we expect to live longer and be more successful

than the average and we tend to underestimate the likelihood of

getting a serious disease or a divorce. This tendency is adaptive—

many researchers have claimed that a positive outlook motivates us

to plan for our future and may even have an effect on our long-term

physical health.

Optimism may be so necessary to our survival that it's hardwired in

our brains. A new study published in the journal Nature further

confirms the idea that having a rosy outlook is a personality trait

with deep, neurological roots. Researchers found that the brains of

optimistic people actually light up differently on a scan than those

who tend to be more pessimistic when they think about future events.

The disparity between positive and pessimistic minds is especially

prominent in areas of the brain that have been linked to

depression. " The same areas that malfunction in depression are very

active when people think about positive events, " says Tali Sharot, a

post-doctorate fellow at University College London, who conducted

the research at New York University.

In the study, Sharot had subjects think about emotional events, both

positive and negative, like winning an award or ending a romantic

relationship. They did this for past events and those that could

plausibly occur in the future, while their brains were being scanned

in a fMRI. Afterwards, subjects filled out a questionnaire that

measured their level of optimism. What Sharot found was that when

participants thought about positive future events, two regions of

the brain became much more active than when they thought about

negative events.

One of those areas (the rostral anterior cingulated) was linked to

optimism with such consistency that it surprised Sharot. " You can

see it in all the subjects, indicating that it's probably very

fundamental to human nature, " she says. " [Optimism] is mediated in

some very strong way in the brain. " And other research has linked

abnormal activity in that same brain region with inherited

depression, suggesting that the tendency toward optimism and

depression is regulated by the same region of the brain.

While we can't say for certain why some people respond more

positively to life's events, it's increasingly clear that your

mental outlook can have a big effect on your physical health.

Optimism motivates individuals to take control of their lives, while

depression has been found to have the opposite effect. It is often

linked to a sense of hopelessness. " The problem with depression is

that people are so pessimistic that they don't engage in actions

that could make their lives better, " says Phelps, one of

the study authors and psychology professor at NYU.

For example, those who hold fatalistic beliefs about cancer, have

shown to be at greater risk of the disease because they not take

preventative measures like eating vegetables or quitting smoking. On

the opposite end, a body of research has linked optimism to better

health. A landmark study of 999 elderly men and women found that

optimism significantly lowered the risk of death from cardiovascular

disease.

The exact nature of the relationship between optimism and good

health is still unclear. Seligman, who studies optimism and

positive thinking at the University of Pennsylvania says that it

might be that, optimists, as opposed to pessimists, are more likely

to take care of their health because they believe in the potential

positive outcomes. Or, it could be that optimistic people are more

likeable and build better social networks, which have been

associated with longevity. Another possibility is that optimistic

people may have had less trauma or difficulty in their lives (a high

number of negative events in a lifetime correlates with bad

health). " All of these are plausible, " says Seligman.

So does this mean that self-help books that aim to boost your

optimism, like " The Secret " or " The Power of Positive Thinking " will

make you healthier? Not necessarily. But researchers like Seligman

do believe that promoting positive thinking is a promising avenue of

medical research. And whether or not you agree with his hopeful

outlook may tell you something about your own brain.