There’s an enormous literature these days on happiness, and pretty much all of it pushes some variety of positive thinking. The Happiness Hypothesis is one of the most thoughtful of these books, and Stumbling on Happiness is a fairly good read too, and Professor Layard’s Happiness is worth reading if you want to understand why the English NHS is about to spend millions on CBT.
But I’ve never been a fan of either bandwagons or one-size-fits-all treatments so I read this study about optimism with interest. Two professors at Duke University’s Business School have come up with an interesting way of measuring optimism – they asked people how long they expected to live and then compared these estimates with actuarial tables of life expectancy. Optimists were classed as those whose self assessment of longevity was beyond that of the statistical predictions and 5% of them were classed as super-optimists – people who reckoned they’d live a good 20 years longer than the statistics would predict! Interesting method, huh?
What they then did was interview people about their behaviours (being a business school they were most interested in financial behaviours). They found the following –
Puri and Robinson find that optimists:
- Work longer hours;
- Invest in individual stocks;
- Save more money;
- Are more likely to pay their credit card balances on time;
- Believe their income will grow over the next five years;
- Plan to retire later (or not at all);
- Are more likely to remarry (if divorced).
In comparison, extreme optimists:
- Work significantly fewer hours;
- Hold a higher proportion of individual stocks in their portfolios, and are more likely to be day traders;
- Save less money;
- Are less likely to pay off their credit card balances on a regular basis;
- Are more likely to smoke.
In other words, while a dose of optimism might be good for you, too much optimism was associated with riskier and less healthy behaviours. I guess it’s this kind of thing that makes it very difficult to do health education with teenagers – trying to tell them smoking will shorten their lives means nothing to most of them – they think those problems are highly unlikely to happen to them.
I think that all coping strategies in life are good if they work for you, but that any coping strategy which is pushed to an extreme will start to harm you. So a little optimism is no doubt a good thing but optimism which is way beyond the probable can disengage a person from reality.
Heroes Not Zombies 
Interesting how the idea of “too much is no good” can even apply to something such as optimism. Perhaps this is a slight reflection of the manic states of bi-polar individuals. Some of the tendencies listed under “Extreme optimists” seem to identify with manic characteristics.
Where I’m from, the main reasons for teenagers to smoke (though I don’t) are that 1) the perception is that “the liberals” don’t like it, and everyone hates liberals, and 2) they’re aware it will lower their life span but they don’t see that as necessarily a bad thing. (Who wants to live to 100 anyway? It just means spending over half your life going downhill.) So I don’t think that particular example has as much to do with being overly optimistic about the risks involved as it does with just not thinking the risks involved are that bad.
That’s probably the case with most dangerous behavior; it’s not that the person taking the risk doesn’t think they’re in danger, they just wouldn’t mind dying/having a decreased life span/whatever the danger is. I’d be interested to see the breakdown of extreme pessimists vs. pessimists.
“moderation in all things”, a phrase so old, there’s no telling where it originated.
Too much optimism seems either like naiveté or sheer cockiness.
Yeah, bi-polar — I was thinking the same thing, considering that it’s not really about “optimism,” but about something being slightly off in their brain. But I definitely agree with the “moderation in all things” philosophy, balance is so key. Taking things to the extreme is a significant reason for the mess our world is in.
But with that said, I had a raised eyebrow in reading this, lol 😉 I just don’t see the correlation between their risky behavior and their positive thinking — how exactly do you measure “too much” positive thinking? I don’t think you can truly have too many positive thoughts, as a generally “normal” person 🙂
The only way lots of positive thinking might be a bad thing is if you’re slightly insane and you do this instead of taking basic practical actions in your life. But I don’t think the average person needs to worry about too much positive thinking, lol Quite the contrary 🙂
I might also interject that just “positive thinking” isn’t particularly effective without an alignment with it in the heart. Ya’ gotta make your body and the world believe it’s the truth 🙂 The positive thinking is pretty much worthless without that. I’ve seen (many times) the power in doing this. And it’s not always an easy thing. I actually believe that “Believe and it shall be so” is the absolute truth 🙂 The challenge is in the believing. And since we all have had lots of “beliefs” burned into our brain, including “ya’ gotta work your ass off to make it happen,” (ya’ gotta do this, ya’ gotta do that, blah, blah, blah) then, until we might learn a different belief, we have to take THAT practical action so the heart will more readily align with the goal. That is, most of us believe we must take some practical action to make something happen. That being the case, we’d for sure better do that.
You’ll know you have that belief established firmly, if you have an immediate and fiery response to that such as, “What the hell, of course, you have to act to make it happen.” lol 🙂 So be it, again, you have to do what aligns with your beliefs. But note, there are people out there who work very little, and yet are mega wealthy. Perhaps their “beliefs” differed from the “work your ass off” belief. Perhaps 🙂
Anyway, sorry, that was kind of off topic, but hopefully of benefit to someone 🙂
Peace,
Dove
It looks to me like the super-optimists have a combination of desperation and denial. But super optimists probably have a winning combination of chutzpah and stupidity that sometimes wins against all odds. It is the exceptions that are exceptional. My grandfather was an enthusiastic smoker and lived into his 80’s. I don’t think he was a super optimist but perhaps an exception. There is a lot to just plain dumb luck in life.
I agree with Dovelove about positive thinking. It didn’t work for me. I made up all these games when I was a child that if I could throw a stone and hit a tree, I would pass my eleven plus. If I could walk down the street and not step on the cracks, I would pass my eleven plus. No matter how much positive/magical thinking I put into it, it didn’t work.
thanks for this, bob.
it’s comforting to know that my cynicism is a most sensible, healthy friend. (heh)
great post, per usual. take care, sir.
verticalx and dovelove, you’re right of course about the bipolar. There’s a personality type described which goes by the name of cyclothymic personality – I’m not a great fan of personality types but what this one is, is someone who has high highs and low lows and swings between them a lot. Too much of any one way of viewing life can become problematic if it becomes delusional – by that I mean if you lose the plot! or lose touch with reality. I think these extreme optimists are like that – their optimism becomes ungrounded so doesn’t let them effectively deal with reality. In that sense gukseon it is like naivete (how do you get that nice wee e acute there, gukseon?)
Dovelove, I guess something like positive thoughts can only be said to be too much when they start to hinder rather than help you live the life you want to lead. I think you make a good point too about belief. For sure positive thinking can’t really be anything by itself, it has to exist within a world view, and what’s a world view other than a set of beliefs about how the world is?
Christopher, I’m with you on the skepticism about positive thinking – especially when its present as something magical (did I hear “cosmic ordering”???)
Hey damewiggy, you’re cynicism is not only a healthy friend, you’ve honed it well to work with humour and that makes a BIG difference!
Super optimism seems like it’s worthy of the dictionary definition “should care about life more, not leave it to chance.”
I like that mo79uk – fits with my heroesnotzombies thing – engage with life, don’t leave it chance
this is a mere (relatively uninformed) opinion, but i don’t like the suggestion that bipolar activity and personality disorders would be linked so loosely. they’re two very distinctly separate disorders. i’m no professional, but based on my experiences with people, those suffering from bipolar breakdowns would probably not define their manic phases as periods of ‘extremely optimistic’. or anything closely remote to that description.
also, i’d like to suggest, or rather request, something (and since you’re the doctor, you can decide it’s value, if any.)
but i’ve read a great deal over the years in regard to healthy nutrition vs. healthy brain chemistry. or rather unhealthy nutriton vs. healthy brain chemistry. since it’s more popular *and far more profitable* (in the u.s., that is) to proscribe prozac or the likes as opposed to advising on dietary practices, and more particularly, the consideration of relating to those living in more isolated settings (table for one) and their tendency to neglect a healthy diet per lack of interest or energy or whatever– perhaps you could translate any information you may have regarding the brain-food topic. brain chemistry is often broken down to : bad brain vs. good brain. and many tend to think strictly in terms of genetics or environment. so many studies indicate that many mental illnesses have more to do with poor nutrition than genetics or even environmental factors (past, present, or future). i’d be really interested on your take on this.
(‘course i don’t expect you to do this, i just thought i’d suggest it since if anyone would be good at delving into it, you’d certainly seem to be ‘the man’.)
p.s. sorry, this was a hellishly long comment.
hey thanks for this damewiggy – well, I must say I’ve never seen you write such a long comment but I really, really appreciate it. You make loads of interesting points here and I think the best thing I should do is put my first thoughts down in response then I think you’ve given me suggestions of other posts – thankyou.
I hate all diagnoses of “personality disorder” – I think it’s a totally crappy, useless diagnosis. It labels, judges and shuts out help for people who are suffering. I also think that personality “type” theories are very, very limited – it’s that old thing of trying to squeeze people into predefined boxes and it’s highly judgemental – setting “norms” that are more often culturally determined than anything else.
However, it does seem that patients with bipolar disorders commonly experienced significantly high highs, low lows and rapid mood changes (cyclothymia) before they developed bipolar disorders. You can’t say it the other way however – the majority of people who get this cyclothymic pattern do NOT go on to develop psychotic bipolar disorders. Hope that clears up the link thing. Does it?
You are absolutely right to say that most people who experience mania do not experience it as optimistic – its distressing and they suffer because of it. It’s not fun. Not at the time, definitely not for others around them, and not afterwards either. Mania is a delusional state – they’ve lost touch with reality. That’s the point of similarity with the super-optimists – they behave riskily cos they have lost touch with reality. It’s definitely not the same thing!
Your query about nutrition is a fascinating one and I definitely think it deserves a better answer than I can do in a comment box so if I can ask for your patience I’ll write something up on it. You know what? I think that our medical interventions are way too simplistic – the idea that you can do one thing – like prescribe a drug, or give a course of CBT, or perform a surgical operation and the person will be “sorted” is, I think, ridiculous. A much better form of medicine would be holistic – and I don’t mean that in any New Agey way – I mean it would address a person as a person (not a person as a wonky brain, or a wheezy chest, or whatever…) – and that would mean addressing a person within the unique contexts of their existence – physical, social, economic, semantic….and so on. (oops! that’s probably ANOTHER post!!)
OK. I’ll stop!
Well……almost……..
just want to say again damewiggy, thankyou – thankyou for posting such a thoughtful and thought-provoking comment and thankyou for the good opinion you have of me – I do appreciate it.
damewiggy,
Thank you for bringing up nutrition. I lived on Mars Bars in my teenage years and into my twenties. I had no idea what that sort of diet would do for me. It didn’t make me fat as I spent hours in the Karate Dojo, but I was clueless when it came to nutrition. That was many decades ago and I have since mended my ways.
I listened to a radio spot with Jack Lalanne talking about his manic exercise program and nutrition regimen. He used to use sugar and it drove him insane ( or so he said). He gave it up and it changed him.
I wondered what cutting back on sugar would be like. These days I avoid sweets but do still do chocolate when its around. Now the brain feeds on sugar and I know that you can get sugar from carbohydrates that get absorbed into the system without giving you those highs and lows.
I live in health-conscious Northern California, but grew up in (like it or lump it) England. I don’t remember ever having an educational experience about diet. So Bob, your thoughts would be of interest about diet and mood.
When you think about the everyday workplace with people sitting all day drinking coffee and eating sugar and high calorie snacks you’d think that something as simple as changing preferences, or the availability of non junk food would be a simple thing to change.
Mmmmm…..Mars Bars! (as Homer would say if he was British!) – haven’t had one for years, and, no, in case you were thinking of asking, I’ve never had a deep-fried one!
You are so right Christopher, I don’t remember ever having an educational experience about diet either. Your comment about junk food suddenly reminded me of that old programmers adage – GIGO (Garbage In Garbage Out)!