Okay, so we've talked about how you assess optimism, and we've talked about definitions of optimism. Now let's kind of delve into the science of optimism. There have been hundreds of studies on optimism, using those two different ways of assessing it. Sort of your expectations about the future, believing that good things are going to happen, as well as how you explain the events that have occurred in your life, explanatory style. And when you look across all of these studies, and these are studies done by Carver and Scheier, by Chris Peterson, by Marty Seligman and colleagues. There are some really important findings that I want to talk about. So, number one, we know that optimistic thinkers, people who score high on optimism compared to people who are scoring lower on optimism, have increased stress heartiness. They cope with stress more effectively, perhaps because they have the belief that the future is bright, so what they're going through today isn't as difficult for them to handle. We know that optimism has impacts on your relationships. So people who are more optimistic compared to people who are less optimistic have greater social support, maybe because optimism is a variable or a trait that we like. When people are optimistic, they're cheery, they're easier to be around. And so, perhaps they have greater social support because of that attitude and how optimism affects a person's energy. They also have increased relationship satisfaction. So maybe if you're an optimist and you are in a relationship, you're more likely to notice the good things that are going on in that relationship. Whereas someone who's less optimistic, more pessimistic, is noticing all of the problems and are therefore less satisfied. So optimism predicts outcomes in relationships. Okay, so another set of studies have looked at how optimism relates to mental and emotional well-being. There's many, many studies in this field. And we know, again, if you compare optimistic thinkers, people who are scoring higher on optimism compared to people who are scoring lower on optimism. That the people who score higher on optimism have greater quality of life, and they're happier. They have greater well-being. There's also research that shows that optimism is related to depression. So the more optimistic you are, the less likely you are to experience symptoms of depression. That makes sense, right? If your belief is that the future is bright, that might help buffer against feelings of depression. Some of the work that we've done here at the University of Pennsylvania has been identifying kids at risk for depression, and I'll tell you how in just a sec. And then teaching them skills of optimism, with a hypothesis that if we increase their ability to think optimistically, we'll be able to lower their experience of depression, lower the symptoms of depression. So, how did we do that? Well, we went into schools, this is work that I did with Dr Jane Gillham, and Marty Seligman, and Dr Lisa Jaycox, and others. We went into schools and we identified children at risk for depression, a risk based on the fact that they were all ready experiencing some symptoms, lower level, but some symptoms of depression. And they reported that their families were families in which there was a high amount of discord or fighting, and lower amounts of cohesion, or closeness and warmth. And so, in these studies, we formed control groups, and we taught some of the kids, half of the kids, skills of optimism and other skills as well. And then we followed them over time to see how did learning these skills of optimism impact their future depression. And what we found was that the kids who learned this set of skills were less likely to report symptoms of depression later across our follow-up period. And one of the primary drivers, or mechanisms, was optimism. So what I mean by that is, as their optimism increased, their depression decreased. Now that finding that optimism seems to be a driver, mediator, has shown up in research with adults as well. So Drs Rob DeRubeis and Steve Holland are leaders in the field of cognitive therapy as a treatment for depression. And they've done lots and lots of studies that have shown that by teaching cognitive therapy or going through a course of cognitive therapy, which includes learning how to challenge overly pessimistic beliefs. That when people learn these skills through cognitive therapy, they show less depression later. And that, again, like in our work, one of the drivers is optimism. As their optimism increases, their symptoms of depression decrease. So, optimism is important, in resilience, in relationships, in mental and emotional well-being. Okay, so it's not just emotional health that optimism affects, it also affects your physical health. So there's been lots of studies done looking at optimism in the domain of physical health. Here's some of what they find. Number one, people who are higher on optimism have a better, more robust immune response. That means you're going to be less likely to get sick. People who are high on optimism are less likely to have coronary artery disease. That's important. And when folks have been hospitalized, for whatever reason, they're less likely to be re-hospitalized later if they're high in optimism. So optimism predicts all sorts of things in the physical health realm. It also predicts mortality. So, when you die [LAUGH], we know that people who score high on optimism live longer than people who are lower in optimism. In fact, there's been this really interesting study done at the University of Pittsburgh. This is with over 97,000 women, so that's a big N. And what these researchers did is they followed these women across an eight-year period. And they looked at people who were in the top quartile of optimism. They measured it using that life orientation test I was talking about, your expectations for the future. So they compared women who were in the top quartile of optimism, to women who were in the bottom quartile of optimism, and here's what they found. First of all, the women in the top quartile were 14% less likely to die across that eight-year period from any cause, compared to women in the bottom quartile. And they were 30% less likely to die specifically from heart disease. So optimism not only affects your physical health, it also affects mortality. Now, there are other domains that optimism affects. There have been a number of studies looking at success, measured in all sorts of different ways. So let's take performance at work. So these are studies that looked at life insurance agents, so let's just kind of talk about that for a second. This was a work done by Marty Seligman and colleagues, and they wanted to find a profession where there was a lot of adversity, a lot of stress, a lot of rejection. And that's life insurance, right? You're making calls trying to sell people life insurance policies. People tend not to like to think about death. And so they went into metropolitan life insurance, and they looked at experienced agents. So these are people who had been selling life insurance for a while, and they gave them a measure of optimism, the attributional style questionnaire. This comes from Dr. Seligman's work. And they compared those in the top decile of optimism to the insurance agents in the bottom decile, and they followed them for two years. What they found was that this really strong optimist sold, wait for it, 88% more insurance across that two year period than those in the bottom decile. That is a lot more insurance, that translates to a lot more business dollar's earnings for that company. Okay, so that was one study. They did another study, also, where they, instead of looking at experienced agents, they looked at new agents. So they looked at about 100 newly hired life insurance agents, and now they compared those that were in the top half of optimism to those in the bottom half of optimism. And what they found was that the optimistic agents were twice as likely to stay on the job. Now, that's important. If you are in a profession where it’s high stress and high attrition, optimism confers an advantage. Optimists are more likely to stay in those high stress professions. In this study, twice as likely to stay in the job. And then when you looked at those surviving agents, the ones that didn't quit, the optimist, the top 25% in terms of optimism, sold 25% more insurance than those in the bottom quartile. So let me just summarize. Experienced agents who are optimists sell a lot more insurance than experienced agents who are low on optimism. And newly hired agents who are higher on optimism are more likely to stay on the job. And that is important. And they sell more. So optimism has really important benefits in terms of success. But success can be measured in other ways as well. So there have been studies that have looked at success in academics, success for college students. Does optimism predict GPA? And so here's a study that was done by Chris Peterson and his colleagues. They looked at about 90 students who had a really strong optimistic, explanatory style. Again, this was using the Seligman assessment of optimism. And they assessed that optimism at the beginning of students' freshman year. As you probably remember, the transition from high school to college is a stressful one, a lot changes. You're away from your parents for the first time. The academics are probably more rigorous. You have a whole new group of peers. You're competing in a different world. So that's a stressful time, that transition. And so they looked at the students who were scoring high in optimism compared to students who were scoring lower on optimism. And what they found was, at the end of their freshman year, the optimistic students had higher GPAs. Now that's after controlling for their SAT scores. So what that means is, knowing someone's optimism will help us predict how they'll do in a academic environment like college, even when you already know what their high school grades were, what their SAT scores were. So optimism matters, not just in sales, it matters in academics as well. There's been other studies. There's been studies done of sport performance, looking at optimistic athletes and comparing optimistic athletes to less optimistic athletes. And the optimistic athletes tend to do much better under pressure, as you can imagine, than the pessimistic athletes. And we'll talk more about mechanisms in a few minutes. So it matters in all sorts of ways when it comes to success.
