[chapter 2]

A KEY TO HEALTH, HAPPINESS, AND SUCCESS

An overview of the compelling research that shows
that optimism supports your health and happiness
and leads to success.

LEARNED HELPLESSNESS

The research into the impact of an optimistic lifestyle on the health of an individual began with American psychologist Martin Seligman. Seligman started his career at the University of Pennsylvania in clinical psychology by doing what many others had done before him. He began looking for what was wrong with people and would try to fix it. Psychology subscribed to the disease model of human functioning, with the main purpose of intervention being to repair damage. The general perspective on health is the same: Health is the absence of illness. We talk about health care policies, but in reality we are dealing with disease policies. In the same way, within Seligman’s world, mental health merely meant the absence of mental illness.

Early in his career, to get a better understanding about the impact of this focus on the negative side of life, Seligman pursued research with his partners Steve Maier and Bruce Overmier that would lead them to the discovery of “learned helplessness.”

The three scientists found that rats and mice in labs became passive and gave up in the face of adversity after they experienced negative events they could do nothing about. Their first experience with helplessness—a mildly painful shock they could not avoid—made them passive, and they gave up any attempt to escape. Other animals that had experienced the same physical shock but could escape it did not become helpless and passive. The ability to escape “immunized” against learned helplessness.

In a further experiment, Seligman and his students implanted a tumor with a 50 percent lethality rate on the flanks of rats. Subsequently, these rats were divided into three groups: One group went through a series of mildly painful escapable shocks; one group went through an identical series of inescapable shocks; and a control group experienced no shock at all.

As expected, 50 percent of the rats in the control group that had not experienced any shock died. Seventy-five percent of the rats in the “inescapable” group died—illustrating that helplessness weakened the body. And 25 percent of the rats in the “escapable” group died—demonstrating that control over life strengthens the body.¹

Seligman had proven that benevolent events strengthen the immune system. He had laid the foundation for optimism as a strategy for better health. The general focus in health care on repairing damage does only half the job: It corrects deficits but fails to build strength.

OPTIMISM PROTECTS AGAINST HEART DISEASE AND CANCER

The case for optimism as a driver for health and happiness was born. To test their premise, Seligman and his team got involved with a study of 120 men from San Francisco who had had their first heart attacks. Psychologists and cardiologists were trying to prove that training the men to change their personalities from aggressive and hostile to easygoing would have an impact on their heart disease. It didn’t.

But subsequently Seligman and his team used the extensive interviews with the men to rate their optimism, counting the “because” statements that showed how they explained whatever happened to them in their lives (see chapter 4). Within eight and a half years, half the men had died of a second heart attack. Could Seligman predict who would have a second heart attack? As Seligman writes in his book Flourish, none of the usual risk factors predicted death: not blood pressure, not cholesterol, not how extensive the damage from the first heart attack was. Only the men’s levels of optimism eight and a half years earlier predicted the second heart attack. Of the sixteen most pessimistic men, fifteen died. Of the sixteen most optimistic men, only five died.²

This finding has been confirmed in many studies since. One landmark study was done in The Netherlands. Nine hundred and ninety-nine 65- to 85-year-olds were followed for nine years. At the beginning of the study in 1991, all participants had to answer the following four questions on a 1 to 3 scale.

1. I still expect much from life.

2. I do not look forward to what lies ahead for me in the years to come.

3. I am still full of plans.

4. I often feel that life is full of promises.

During the nine years of the study, 397 subjects died. Pessimism was very strongly associated with mortality. Optimists experienced only 23 percent of the heart disease deaths of pessimists, and only 55 percent of the overall death rate compared to the pessimists.³

The relationship among optimism, pessimism, and heart disease goes two ways in the studies. High optimists die at a lower rate and high pessimists die at a higher rate than average. Optimism strengthens people against heart disease, just as pessimism weakens them.

Does optimism deliver a better outcome in the case of cancer as well? The research is less clear because the optimism advantage seems to relate most to the functioning of the immune system. That system is critical to protecting against the onset of cancer—and that’s where optimism provides a key protection advantage—but once cancer is diagnosed, many other factors (the endocrine system, the autonomous nervous system) begin playing a role too, and the optimism factor diminishes.

In Flourish, Seligman cites the most complete review of the link between optimism and cancer in the meta-study “Optimism and Physical Health.”⁴ This study analyzes eightythree separate studies of optimism and physical health; eighteen of these, involving 2,858 patients, concern cancer. Seligman writes, “Taken together, they find that more optimistic people have better cancer outcomes at a robust level of significance,” and he concludes, “My overview of the cancer literature is that it leans heavily in the direction of pessimism as a risk factor for developing cancer.”

OPTIMISM BOOSTS THE IMMUNE SYSTEM

Many studies show that optimism is good for your health. Optimistic mothers give birth to bigger and healthier babies.⁵ Optimists recover more quickly from disease and surgery.⁶ Optimists live longer.⁷ But how optimism does that is less clear. That’s why Suzanne Segerstrom, professor of psychology at the University of Kentucky, has been researching the relationship between optimism and the immune system for many years. In one of her most recent studies she worked with a group of 124 first-year law students. The students were studied five times over six months. Each time, they answered questions about how optimistic they felt about law school. Then they were injected with material that should summon an immune response. Two days later, they came back to have the injection site measured. A larger bump in the skin meant a stronger immune response.

The study gave an outcome that confirms earlier findings by Segerstrom.⁸ A general optimistic outlook on life does not necessarily lead to differences in immune responses among students. But what does make a difference is optimism linked to specific events, like, in Segerstrom’s study, grades and tests results. As each student’s expectations about law school waxed and waned, their immune response followed along. At more optimistic times, they’d have bigger immune responses; at a more pessimistic time, more sluggish immune responses.

So, being optimistic about success in a specific, important domain promotes better immunity. Simply put: If your grades give you confidence that you are a good law student, you tend to be optimistic about your next tests. And with this optimism comes a stronger immune system. A little optimism helps. Segerstrom: “If people have slightly more positive views of the future than is actually true, that’s adaptive.”

OPTIMISM IS A CURE FOR DEPRESSION

The research is abundant and clear: Optimism is good for your physical health. But what about your mental health? Specifically, is there a link to the depression epidemic that infests many countries in the Western world? Compared to the history of our ancestors, we live in the best possible times (see chapter 5). There’s more peace; we are in better health; we live longer with a higher standard of living. Yet we are more depressed. There’s more pessimism than ever. And so the question is, Can we fight the depression epidemic by spreading optimism?

Pessimism and depression are linked. Martin Seligman gave questionnaires to thousands of depressed people and consistently found that they were also pessimistic. However, that does not necessarily mean pessimism causes depression. In a multiyear study, Seligman found that pessimistic children are more likely to become and stay depressed. But that may merely indicate that pessimism precedes and predicts depression rather than causing it.

Then he followed a different reasoning: If pessimism were the cause of depression, changing pessimism into optimism should relieve the depression. Seligman knew that it was possible to teach pessimists to become optimists (see chapter 4). In a study of depressed pessimists, subjects were taught through cognitive therapy to change the way they explain life events to themselves (their “explanatory style”; see chapter 4).⁹ The study showed that changing explanatory style from pessimism to optimism relieves depression markedly.

Changing the way people think about their lives turned out to be far more effective in relieving depression than dispensing drugs. It also means optimism is indeed a cure for depression. Pessimism is not the only cause of depression (genes, hormones, and other factors play a role); consequently, optimism is not the only solution. But it is a major one.

Optimists are resilient. Their positive outlook on life protects their mentality in challenging circumstances. Dennis Charney, dean of research at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, examined 750 Vietnam War veterans held as prisoners of war for six to eight years. They were tortured and kept in solitary confinement. But unlike many of their fellow veterans, they did not develop depression or post-traumatic stress disorder on release. After extensive interviews and tests, Charney found ten characteristics that set them apart. Optimism was on top, altruism second. A sense of humor and having something to live for (meaning in life) were important factors too.¹⁰

OPTIMISTS ARE MORE SUCCESSFUL

In 1983 a study of 104 life insurance agents showed the relationship between optimism and success. All 104 agents scored very high on the initial optimism test. After one year 59 of the 104 had quit.

The agents who scored in the less optimistic half were twice as likely to quit. Agents who scored in the least optimistic quarter were three times likelier to quit than the agents who scored in the most optimistic quarter.

And the top-half optimistic agents sold 20 percent more insurance than the less optimistic agents from the bottom half. The agents from the top quarter sold 50 percent more than the agents in the bottom quarter. This study showed that optimism predicted who survived and who sold the most.

Based on this study, insurance company MetLife decided to test all applicants for their optimism. The strategy made MetLife, which had lost the industry leadership to Prudential at that time, very successful, because employees who would have caused problems and would have quit earlier in the past were no longer hired to begin with. The choice for optimism helped MetLife regain industry leadership over Prudential.

In sports we see the same. Athletes that have an optimistic explanatory style are more successful. The thing that sets them apart is that they know how to come back from defeat. In his book Learned Optimism, Seligman tells the story about swimmer Matt Biondi, who won five gold medals at the 1988 Seoul Olympics.

A few months before the Olympics, Biondi and his teammates had participated in a test to determine their levels of optimism. He came out in the top quarter of an already highly optimistic team.

As part of the test Biondi’s coach simulated defeat under controlled conditions in the pool. During his practice Biondi swam the hundred-meter butterfly all out. Biondi’s time was 50.2 seconds—a very good time. However, his coach told him that his time had been 51.7 seconds—a bad time for Biondi. The coach told him to take a short rest and then swim the race again. This time Biondi clocked 50.0 seconds. Because of his optimistic explanatory time Biondi got faster—not slower—after defeat.

This test served him well. In his first two races in Seoul, Biondi disappointed. He took a bronze and a silver medal instead of the golds he had been expected to take. Had Biondi peaked too early? Was he not the superstar people had expected?

Although the press and the audience lost their faith in him, Biondi, confirming the test done by Seligman and his team months earlier, bounced back from defeat, and from his five remaining races he brought five gold medals back to the United States.

The research is clear: Optimism helps us cope with difficult life events. It supports resilience. It makes us happier and healthier. So it makes a lot of sense to learn how to become an (even better) optimist. That’s what the next chapter is all about.