A US study that followed nearly 100,000 post-menopausal women found that optimists had lower rates of death and incidence of many chronic diseases compared to pessimists, as did women who were more trustful of people compared to their cynically hostile counterparts.
The study was led by Dr Hilary Tindle, who is assistant professor of medicine in the Division of Internal Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and who presented the findings at the American Psychosomatic Society's 67th annual meeting in Chicago last week.
Tindle and colleagues analyzed data from the Women's Health Initiative, an ongoing study funded by the National Institutes of Health that has been following women aged 50 and over since 1994.
Defining optimism as expecting good rather than bad things to happen, they found that optimistic women had a decreased rate of death and were 30 per cent less likely to die from coronary heart disease than their pessimistic counterparts.
Women who were identified as being more cynically hostile also fared worse, they had a higher rate of death and were 23 per cent more like to die from cancer-related causes said the researchers.
oh man, I am so screwed!!! My nickname is cynical Cindee!