Do Optimists Deal with Stress Higher Than Pessimists?

When the world is turned the wrong way up and looks like it should hell in a handbasket, it is arduous to be optimistic. Some conditions are so dire that no quantity of optimism or “response-focused emotion regulation” could make issues higher. In earth-shaking circumstances or a humanitarian disaster, being a pragmatic realist might be higher for our emotional well-being than poisonous positivity or Pollyannaism.

That mentioned, when dealing with day by day stressors (work stress, house stress, arguments), new analysis means that optimism helps older adults keep emotional well-being through “antecedent-focused emotion regulation.” Throughout AFER, optimists make the most of an explanatory model that includes reframing potential stressors as “challenges not threats” early within the emotion-generating course of, or they steer clear and keep away from potential stressors altogether.

This 20-year research led by a workforce of researchers from Boston College and the Harvard T.H. Chan College of Public Well being means that antecedent-focused emotion regulation helps optimists keep away from or decrease the influence of hectic circumstances earlier than they occur. Antecedent means “previous in time or order” or “a factor or occasion that existed earlier than or logically precedes one other.”

The findings of this two-decade research (Lee et al., 2022) on the hyperlink between optimism, day by day stressors, and emotional well-being in a cohort of 233 males who participated within the Veterans Affairs Normative Growing older Examine have been revealed on March 7 in The Journals of Gerontology: Sequence B.

Optimism Is not a Successful Technique for Dealing with Each day Stressors If You are Already Confused Out

Dispositional optimism is loosely outlined because the tendency to count on constructive outcomes based mostly on a perception that antagonistic occasions are fleeting, situation-specific, and exterior to 1’s core being. Optimists are inclined to see the proverbial glass as “half-full.” Their explanatory model and worldview: Optimistic occasions usually tend to happen sooner or later than damaging occasions.

When first writer Lewina Lee and colleagues got down to research how optimism impacts folks’s response to day by day stressors, they anticipated to seek out that optimists would have much less emotional reactivity to day by day stressors and bounce again quicker (emotional restoration) based mostly on the so-called buffering speculation.

Because the authors clarify, “Our buffering speculation posits that optimism would mitigate the damaging emotional influence of day by day stressors, such that increased optimism could be related to decrease emotional reactivity and more practical emotional restoration from day by day stressors.”

Antecedent-Primarily based Emotion Regulation Has Stress-Busting Potential

To their shock, Lee et al. discovered that their buffering speculation fell flat; optimists weren’t essentially much less emotionally reactive and did not all the time bounce again quicker than pessimists as soon as they’d already encountered a day by day stressor.

Nonetheless, planning forward and growing a coping technique through antecedent-focused emotion regulation earlier than experiencing stressors within the warmth of the second did assist optimists keep calm, cool, and picked up within the face of day-to-day stressors. Because the authors clarify:

“Optimism could defend emotional well-being in later life via antecedent-focused emotion regulation methods that intervene earlier within the emotion-generative course of, akin to consideration deployment and state of affairs choice, slightly than via response-focused methods.”

Once more, the important thing to antecedent-focused emotion regulation is that you just foresee what’s more likely to set off a stress response and reframe your explanatory model (or keep away from the state of affairs) earlier than feelings flare up, not after you are already stressed.

Take-Dwelling Message: Antecedent Coping Methods Are Key

“On this potential research on optimism and day by day stress processes, our speculation that optimism would buffer the results of day by day stressors on day by day have an effect on was not supported,” the authors conclude. However, optimism seems to protect emotional well-being amongst older adults in the event that they use antecedent methods—which restrict publicity and damaging perceptions of doubtless hectic circumstances earlier than they occur—early within the emotion-generative course of.