Optimistic Men Have a Better Shot at Less-Stressful, Healthy Aging, Finds New Study

“Don’t worry, be happy,” is more than just a song lyric. A growing body of evidence supports an association between optimism and healthy aging.

A new study has found that being more optimistic appears to promote emotional well-being by limiting how often older men experience stressful situations, like arguments, or effecting the way they interpret such stress.

“This study tests one possible explanation, assessing if more optimistic people handle daily stress more constructively and therefore enjoy better emotional well-being,” said corresponding author Lewina Lee, PhD, clinical psychologist and assistant professor of psychiatry at Boston University School of Medicine.

The researchers surveyed for over a decade the same 233 older men who had completed an optimism questionnaire. 14 years later, they reported daily stressors, along with positive and negative moods, on eight consecutive evenings three times over an 8-year span.

The researchers found more optimistic men reported not only lower negative mood, but also more positive mood (beyond simply not feeling negative).

They also reported having fewer stressors—which was unrelated to their higher positive mood but it explained their lower levels of negative mood, according to the findings published in the Journals of Gerontology, Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences.