Do optimists really live longer?

Despite current events, though, a solid chunk of people remain optimistic. A poll from Ipsos at the end of last year found that 58% of respondents from the UK felt optimistic that 2026 was going to be a better year for them, albeit a reduction of 3% from the previous year’s survey.

While this optimism might help people to cope when tough times come their way, some research suggests optimism could also help people live to the age of 85 or beyond.

In this one particular study, being among the most optimistic people was associated with an 11–15% longer lifespan compared with those with the least optimism.

Read on to find what the study found, what mechanisms might have been behind this, and whether or not it’s possible to change from being a pessimist to an optimist.

Optimism and longevity: What the study found

The 2019 study, published in PNAS, set out to investigate whether being optimistic was associated with longer life expectancy and being more likely to reach the age of 85, defined by the researchers as “achieving exceptional longevity.”

The researchers analysed two cohorts of data: the Nurses’ Health Study (69,744 females) and the Veterans Affairs Normative Aging Study (1,429 males).

The participants in the Nurses’ Health Study completed questionnaires to assess their levels of optimism in 2004 and were then tracked for the next 10 years. Those in the Veterans Affairs Normative Aging Study completed optimism assessments in 1986 and were tracked for 30 years. 

At the end of the study, researchers found that having higher levels of optimism was associated with longer lives and being more likely to reach the age of 85.

This association was also present when the researchers adjusted the data to account for pre-existing health conditions at the start of the study. This included physical health conditions, such as high blood pressure, heart disease, and cancer, as well as depression.

How might optimism affect how long we live?

The rationale for why optimists tend to live longer is multifaceted. Other studies have shown associations between optimism and a number of different changes in the body that could impact overall health:

• The immune system: A small study following law students for one year found a correlation between optimism levels and their immune systems. 
• Lipids: A 2014 study looking at middle-aged white people in the US found an association between higher levels of optimism, higher levels of HDL cholesterol (also known as “good” cholesterol), and lower levels of triglycerides, a type of fat in your blood.
• Heart health: A 2022 meta-analysis found an association between optimism and a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease, while a 2023 study noted an association between optimism and better cardiovascular health over a 10-year period.
• Telomere length: Telomeres are at the ends of our chromosomes and provide them with structural integrity. They shorten over time and so are a marker of cellular ageing. Some research has found an association between telomere length and optimism, although other studies downplay its role.

Bringing it all together, a 2009 meta-analysis found that having optimism was a significant predictor of positive health outcomes (including cardiovascular health, healthy ageing, cancer outcomes, and pain) across a range of different areas.

However, these studies don’t show that optimism causes health changes, only that it is associated with them.

In the main study we’re looking at, the authors call out links between optimism and healthy behaviours, suggesting that being optimistic might help people to form healthy habits and set and maintain healthy goals.

Indeed, they note that when they adjusted their data for health-related behaviours at the baseline, including smoking, exercise, and diet, the association between optimism and longevity became less strong.

Another area where optimism might help is with responding to and recovering from the effects of stressful things. The researchers suggest that having high levels of optimism might help you to regulate your emotions through how you think or by what you do in response to stressors.

How your mindset could shape the ageing process  

Some researchers believe there’s another way to look at optimism. Rather than thinking about how your mind might affect your body (or vice versa), we should think about how our mind and body are one and the same.

One such person is psychologist Ellen Langer, known as the “mother of mindfulness.” In her famous 1979 Counterclockwise experiment, a group of older male participants spent a week living together as though it was 1959 and they were two decades younger.

In that short space of time, Langer and her team observed improvements in the participants’ health, including hearing, vision, flexibility, appetite, and wellbeing.

The idea of the study was to test whether someone’s perception of ageing could affect the ageing process itself. These results suggest that how you think about your own ageing might actually change how your body ages.

What the research on optimism can’t tell us yet

Optimism is a difficult thing to evaluate. It isn’t something that you can objectively measure, and it would be nigh-on impossible to do a randomised controlled trial on being optimistic.

With the 2019 study in PNAS, although the researchers looked at large groups of people, they were from specific populations (female nurses and male veterans) who were mainly white and from a secure socioeconomic background.

As a result, we might not be able to generalise the findings to people with a different racial or ethnic background, or to people who are more socioeconomically disadvantaged.

That said, the researchers did suggest that the effects of optimism they found were still present across more diverse groups. And the findings were also consistent between males and females, whereas older studies had reported a difference between sexes.

We also don’t know from this study how optimism in earlier stages of life might impact health, given that the study only looked at people who were middle-aged and older.

Finally, we don’t know which direction the relationship between optimism and health goes. Might the people in the study have been optimistic due to their health instead? While the researchers excluded people from their analysis if they had a major chronic disease to begin with, this isn’t enough to rule out the possibility of reverse causality here.

So, there remain some unknowns about these findings. How much stock you put in them may well depend on how optimistic or pessimistic you are.

How to be more optimistic

Even if optimism on its own doesn’t change what’s going on in our bodies, there’s enough evidence to suggest that optimistic thinking can support healthy behaviour. So, how do you go about becoming more optimistic?

Around 25% of optimism is inherited, and the rest is shaped by your environment and behaviour.

• The “best possible self” exercise: This involves imagining your “best possible self,” visualising and writing about an ideal future for yourself. Think about what it would look like if everything went well for you in terms of your personal life, relationships, career, and health and write about it for 15 minutes once a week. Several studies have found that the best possible self exercise can lead to increases in optimism and positivity for those regularly using it. 
• Gratitude journaling: This is another approach: noting down one to three moments from each day that went well. Doing so could help you focus on the positives while tuning out the less-than-positives.
• Langerian mindfulness: This involves trying to not only notice our bodies, feelings, and surroundings but also to actively search for new, different ways of looking at things. Being able to reframe whatever situation we might be in increases our chances of finding a positive way of looking at it. In turn, this could aid in how we regulate our emotions whenever we have to deal with stressors. 

If you feel sceptical about anything relating to the “power of positive thinking,” especially with all the examples of toxic positivity out there, remember that there’s a difference between positivity and optimism. You can feel negative about the present but also optimistic about how things might be in the future. 

Takeaway

A study observed that higher levels of optimism were associated with living longer and being more likely to reach 85. While it doesn’t show that being optimistic will help you live longer, other studies have found associations between optimism and positive health changes.

Having an optimistic outlook may also help you with creating and maintaining healthy habits. So, it may be worth considering optimism to be a useful resource for your health journey. Plus, any amount of thinking about what changes could improve your health suggests you have a certain level of optimism already.

Disclaimer: This information is for general educational purposes only and isn’t a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always speak with a qualified healthcare professional first if you have concerns about your health.