Research Hit: Oh Dear - Optimism Linked To Lower Cognitive Abilities!

Optimism may not be such a good thing - based on a large body of data on financial outcomes

But surely optimism is good for you - lowering stress and all the benefits that come with that?

That would make sense and that is the reasoning behind the advice common in self-help books. Being in a constant state of anxiety about the future seems, logically, like a bad place to be.

However, this study didn’t look into wellbeing - other studies have done that and, indeed, some studies have found positive correlations between optimism and wellbeing (we did compare optimism to wellbeing in one study we did in 2014 and didn’t find any significant correlations). But back to this study just published.

Chris Dawson of the University of Bath looked into the correlations of financial outcomes of 36’000 households over ten years with their future predictions and cognitive abilities.

So where does the optimism come in?

Well, you measure that with the optimism of the financial outlook - for example, how did participants respond to the question:

“Looking ahead, how do you think you will be financially a year from now, will you be. . .

1. Better off

2. Worse off than you are now

3. or about the same?”

That gives you the scale of optimism vs. pessimism and this is then measured by the actual outcome. If you respond “better off” you can be classed as optimistic and if that didn’t turn out to be true unrealistic.

OK so this is based on financial outcomes - what were the results?