Older people who have little expectation of a satisfactory future tend to live longer than those who are overly optimistic, according to a study based on data from 40,000 subjects between the ages of 18 and 96. "Our findings reveal that being an extreme optimist and predicting a better future is associated with a higher risk of death," says Frieder R. Lang, from the University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany. On the contrary, pessimism "makes people live by taking extreme precautions and taking better care of their health" , as stated by the researcher in the latest issue of the journal Psychology and Aging .
In the study, the subjects were asked how satisfied they were at the present moment and how satisfied they imagined themselves within five years, asking them to rate it on a scale of 0 to 10. After half a decade, the scientists found that the oldest had also been the most pessimistic, with a percentage of 43% of those over 65 who had underestimated the level of satisfaction with their future life . In addition, the data revealed that those who had overestimated how they would live suffered around 9.5% more disabilities and a 10% risk of dying for each point that they had "exceeded" predicting their future well-being.
"Since a negative vision of the future is usually more in line with reality, the elderly predict better how happy they will be than the young, who have a more idealized perspective of what their future will be like," the research reveals.
