Sci Rep: Watch out! People who are pessimistic about their future performance have a higher risk of premature death!

Aug 3, 2020 // In a recent study published in the international journal Scientific Reports, scientists from the QIMR Berghofer Institute of Medicine found that people who are extremely pessimistic about the future tend to have a higher risk of premature death than those who are not pessimistic about the future.
picture source: John Whitfield, a researcher at the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute, said that study participants with a higher pessimistic score in the questionnaire were likely to die two years earlier on average than those with a lower pessimistic score, and that people with extreme pessimism were more likely to die from cardiovascular disease and other causes (not including cancer), on the other hand, there was no significant relationship between the participants' optimistic scores and death, whether positive or negative.
less than 9 percent of the participants considered themselves to be very pessimistic, while there was no significant difference in the performance of men and women in terms of optimism or pessimism, and on average, a person's level of optimism or pessimism increased with age; Data were collected from about 3,000 participants who completed the Life Orientation Test, which the researchers used as part of a questionnaire designed to analyse the health of Australians over the age of 50 between 1993 and 1995.
these participants were invited to agree or disagree with statements, including positive statements such as "I am always optimistic about my future" or negative statements, such as "If something goes wrong for me, then there's going to be a problem."
then in October 2017, researchers cross-checked participants' information with the Australian National Death Index to determine the number and cause of death (more than 1,000 participants died).
previous studies have revealed a direct link between optimism/pessimism and the occurrence of specific diseases such as cardiovascular disease or stroke, but previous studies have put optimism and pessimism together;
optimism and pessimism are not directly opposed, and in this paper, researchers used two different scales to determine pessimism and optimism and their association with the incidence of all-cause dying among participants.
While strong pessimism is directly associated with the risk of premature death, life expectancy in those who scored higher on the optimistic score was not above average, and the researchers said that disease seemed less likely to lead to pessimism because they did not find that people who died of cancer showed strong pessimism in tests, and that the disease should also be applicable to cancer and cardiovascular disease if it led to an increase in pessimism.
the study also raises questions about the practical health benefits of training people to get rid of pessimism, and finally the researchers say that the body's long-term health is influenced by our "half-empty" or "half-full" thinking, and that these two ways of looking at things differently can change the way we face the world, so try to reduce negative emotions or promote the body's health, even in very difficult situations. Original origins for
() Whitfield, J.B., Zhu, G., Landers, J.G. et al. Barclay is an et al. Sci Rep 10, 12609 (2020). doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-69388-y.