Here ’s How Feelings Of Optimism Change As We Age

By Emily Reynolds There’s a commonly held notion that young people are more hopeful about the future than any other group — you might have heard this referred to, either positively or negatively, as “youthful optimism”. Even Jane Austen picked up on it: “There is something so amiable in the prejudices of a young mind that one is sorry to see them give way to the reception of more general opinions”, she wrote in Sense and Sensibility. But is this actually the case? According to a new study from William J. Chopik and colleagues published in the Journal of Research in Personality, optimism actually continues growing well past youth — and it’s only later in life that it begins to decline. The team was interested in how optimism changes with age — and how life events might affect that trajectory. They gathered data from three longitudinal studies of people aged between 16 and 101: one from the Netherlands (10,045 participants), one from Germany (42,691 participants) and one from the United States (22,150 participants). In the Dutch and American studies optimism was tracked using a six-item measure, with participants rating how much they agreed with statements including “I expect more good things to happen” or “I rarely count on good things”. In Germany, participants rated how optimistic or pessimistic they were about the future on a scale from 1 to 4. The team also looked at sixteen life events concerning children (e.g. childbirth, or a ...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Cross-cultural Developmental Positive psychology Source Type: blogs