The future looks bright: Study shows optimistic youth lead healthier lives

Research shows that optimistic and pessimistic children and adults engage with their physical health in different ways. (Shutterstock) by Eloïse Fairbank, Concordia University and James Borenstein-Laurie, Concordia University If you’ve ever told your child to look on the bright side, or taught them to see the glass as half full, you might wonder if there are real benefits to positive thinking. As it turns out, people who are more optimistic about their future actually tend to be significantly healthier. Many studies show that optimistic adults have better cardiovascular health, less disease and can even live longer than their less optimistic peers. As scientists interested in personality and health across the lifespan, we were curious about whether these same benefits are found for kids and teenagers. The answer from our new review study? Keep the positive thinking coming! To address our research question, we did a deep dive into the published research on optimism and health in youth. Using a structured approach, we narrowed more than 5,000 search results down to 60 relevant studies. These papers were published across more than three decades and sampled kids and teenagers with and without pre-existing health conditions such as diabetes or cancer. We learned...