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People who tend to be optimistic are likelier to live to 85 or more: study

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Re: People who tend to be optimistic are likelier to live to 85 or more: study

#91

Post by amelius »

pella wrote: post #74
pella wrote: post #73

The "Optimism" + "Placebo" - theory is also interesting. (2007) "A prior investigation found that individuals low in optimism are more likely to follow a negative placebo (nocebo) expectation. The present study tested the hypothesis that individuals high in optimism are more likely to follow a positive placebo expectation." "Results Optimism was positively associated with better sleep quality in the placebo expectati…

Your doctor optimism is more important! "The placebo effect works and you can catch it from your doctor" (October 22, 2019 ) "If there's one thing you do want to catch from a trip to your doctor, it's her optimism." "The new study both demonstrates that the placebo effect is transmitted from doctor to patient, and shows how it might work. Researchers randomly assigned undergraduate students to play the role of a pati…

So pessimists can't be doctors?

Re: People who tend to be optimistic are likelier to live to 85 or more: study

#92

Post by Cougher »

kristiandupont wrote: post #50

Yesterday, my wife stumbled upon a "20 pieces of good news" article and read it to me. Things like initiatives being taken to save the bees etc. At first I thought it was a bit silly but I realized that hearing all those good things did something wonderful: it made me feel quite optimistic on behalf of the world, which I can't say I have in a while (in spite of my own life going quite well). Keeping informed is the d…

"Keeping informed is the duty of a citizen in a democracy"

Sorry, but I have no such duty. We are free to do or not do as we wish. News media has evolved to make us angry and stressed and to pit us against each other, while encouraging us to come back for more. It's gotten much worse over time. After years of fulfilling my "duty" and forever frustrated that the more I learn, the more obvious it becomes that our problems are intractable the problems because most people are only superficially informed enough to know that the other side is wrong and our side is right. I've sworn it off as it's just an unrelenting source of stress and madness from the left and the right.

Re: People who tend to be optimistic are likelier to live to 85 or more: study

#93

Post by rzzzt »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #76
rzzzt wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if the constant presence of stress hormones makes people more prone to pessimism?

What if pessimists are less likely to engage in self-preserving or self-improving behaviour (because why bother), creating a self-sustaining negative feedback loop?

Yes.

Re: People who tend to be optimistic are likelier to live to 85 or more: study

#94

Post by ekianjo »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #53
aytekin wrote: post #38

More likely: "People who live 85 or more have more of the good things like health and safe environment which also makes them optimistic."

If you read the article, the study accounts for influencing factors.

It's not a discussion about influencing factors, it's a discussion about causality.

Re: People who tend to be optimistic are likelier to live to 85 or more: study

#95

Post by ekianjo »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #69
kristiandupont wrote: post #50

Yesterday, my wife stumbled upon a "20 pieces of good news" article and read it to me. Things like initiatives being taken to save the bees etc. At first I thought it was a bit silly but I realized that hearing all those good things did something wonderful: it made me feel quite optimistic on behalf of the world, which I can't say I have in a while (in spite of my own life going quite well). Keeping informed is the d…

I briefly read some "good news" sites years ago, but stopped because they started to depress me as I looked deeper into the individual reports. Most of the stories I've read were of the pattern of, "an inspiring but meaningless TED talk", or "an individual doing something completely inconsequential, but positively-looking", or "an individual or a small group working hard on a project that's completely bogus, but of c…

> I briefly read some "good news" sites years ago, but stopped because they started to depress me

I think it was also a site like science-daily that makes it sound like they have an extraordinary scientific finding that will revolutionize the world every single day, except that most of it is just PR or badly designed studies.

Re: People who tend to be optimistic are likelier to live to 85 or more: study

#96

Post by ekianjo »

kristiandupont wrote: post #50

Yesterday, my wife stumbled upon a "20 pieces of good news" article and read it to me. Things like initiatives being taken to save the bees etc. At first I thought it was a bit silly but I realized that hearing all those good things did something wonderful: it made me feel quite optimistic on behalf of the world, which I can't say I have in a while (in spite of my own life going quite well). Keeping informed is the d…

> Keeping informed is the duty of a citizen in a democracy

Says who? Are we taking votes away from ill-informed people? I don't think so. And even the act of being informed would be a massive task in itself. Where do you start? What does being informed even mean? How much depth is enough? Just following local news in details would take the good part of one's day, so being informed on a much larger level is pretty much an impossible task with the amount of information readily available to us these days.

Re: People who tend to be optimistic are likelier to live to 85 or more: study

#97

Post by dash2 »

ekianjo wrote: post #96
kristiandupont wrote: post #50

Yesterday, my wife stumbled upon a "20 pieces of good news" article and read it to me. Things like initiatives being taken to save the bees etc. At first I thought it was a bit silly but I realized that hearing all those good things did something wonderful: it made me feel quite optimistic on behalf of the world, which I can't say I have in a while (in spite of my own life going quite well). Keeping informed is the d…

> Keeping informed is the duty of a citizen in a democracy Says who? Are we taking votes away from ill-informed people? I don't think so. And even the act of being informed would be a massive task in itself. Where do you start? What does being informed even mean? How much depth is enough? Just following local news in details would take the good part of one's day, so being informed on a much larger level is pretty muc…

Moral duty, not legal. Parse it as "keeping reasonably informed", not "keeping totally informed".

Re: People who tend to be optimistic are likelier to live to 85 or more: study

#98

Post by achenatx »

rzzzt wrote: post #72
has2k1 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is possible to imagine a potential casual process that leads to earlier death. What if pessimism creates a constant presence of key stress hormones (Adrenaline, Cortisol and Norepinephrine) and these are already linked to higher likelihoods of heart disease, cancer, ...

What if the constant presence of stress hormones makes people more prone to pessimism?

Anecdotally, Ive been very fortunate to have a positive brain chemistry. When bad things have happened, my brain pretty much doesn't worry on them. Eventually things work out (or something good eventually happens) and I get through the bad times.

There is no way to explain or describe this positive brain chemistry in a way that anyone can believe. But since I was a kid, my parents have been worried that Im too happy as they know dissatisfaction is what drives people to achieve. They would say things like "your only problem is you are too happy".

I havent lived to 85 yet though, so who knows.

Re: People who tend to be optimistic are likelier to live to 85 or more: study

#100

Post by Someone »

For those repeating the “correlation isn’t causation” mantra: if you click through to the original article (https://www.pnas.org/content/116/37/18357), you’ll find its title is "Optimism is associated with exceptional longevity in 2 epidemiologic cohorts of men and women”, so the authors of the paper are aware of that.

They tried hard to adjust for demographics and health conditions.

So, any critique should be on where those adjustments fail. The article is paywalled, so, even if I were knowledgeable about how that can be done, I can’t tell whether they are valid.

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