GETTYSBURG MEDICAL NEWS
THE CLINICAL VIEW
By: Phillip E. Hoffsten, M.D
17, February 2000.

 Optimism and Pessimism

A recent Sunday cartoon showed a picture of an ambulance depicted as driving fast and with the siren blaring. The cartoon then depicted two children as they thought about the ambulance. One child was frowning and saying, “This is terrible, somebody must be very sick”. The other child was smiling and stating, “Oh good! Somebody’s getting the help that they need”. Both statements by the children are accurate; although, they reflect a difference in attitudes. One could be described as pessimistic and the other could be described as optimistic.

While some may seem skeptical about this concept, it is has been suspected over many years time that attitudes have a significant impact on a person’s ability to deal with illness. It thus became useful to find something that would measure a person’s attitude. Beginning many years ago, the University of Minnesota was involved in developing a test called the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Test. This test has been over 50 years in its development and has been administered to thousands of individuals to develop useful information. I have previously mentioned this test in regard to its ability to identify the trait of hostility in individuals. In a previous column, studies demonstrate hostility to be highly detrimental to an individual’s health were described.

Now there is an aspect of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Test that can measure whether a person is optimistic in their attitude or pessimistic in their attitude. Mayo Clinic recently utilized this test in a very amazing study. They first went back to the period of 1962 through 1965 and had the scores of a number of individuals obtained on the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Test at that time. Then using the scores for a person being optimistic or pessimistic, these individuals were divided into two groups. The question asked was: “Thirty­-five years later is there a difference in the general health of the optimist as opposed to the pessimist?”

The results were quite striking. Indeed, the mortality among the pessimistic group was clearly higher than among the optimistic group. This study was not able to identify specific disease processes that were more active in the pessimistic group, there was simply a greater mortality overall in the pessimistic group.

In these columns, I have previously pointed out that personality traits make a difference in a person’s health. As I mentioned above, the presence of sustained hostility in an individual carries strong negative influence on mortality. In a previous column, it was pointed out that social contacts were beneficial and social isolation carried strong negative influence on mortality. Now, according to the Mayo Clinic study, a third personality factor can be identified. Stated in a positive way, optimism has a strong positive influence in preventing mortality.

One might ask what use this information might be. So a person is hostile or isolated or pessimistic. So what? These are just traits that the person has and cannot be changed. Wrong!! Dr. Martin Seligman is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. He has spent years of his career working on the above concepts. He has written a book titled Learned Optimism in which he points out that hostility and pessimism are learned behaviors. Therefore, through effort and education, new behaviors can be learned to replace old ones that are detrimental.

As an example, he describes an individual who has taken an examination in French and failed. The pessimist attitude is “I will never pass French because I am too stupid. I can not do anything right”. Their attitude is that their problem is: 1. Permanent. 2. Global, pertaining to all aspects of their life. 3. Personal, i.e., something wrong with the person.

The optimist placed in the same situation of flunking a French exam expresses an attitude, “I may not have done well on this examination but I can do better if I change my way of studying.” The optimist attitude is: 1. The problem is isolate to one area, not global. 2. It is correctable and not permanent. 3. It has to do with performance and not an intrinsic property diminishing the individual.

Optimism can be learned. I would highly recommend Dr. Seligman’s book mentioned above. Suffice at this point to learn that your attitudes and your belief system can be life saving. Constant anger, pessimism, and being isolated is bad for your health.