Lewina O Lee1,2, Francine Grodstein3,4, Claudia Trudel-Fitzgerald5,6, Peter James7,8, Sakurako S Okuzono5, Hayami K Koga5, Joel Schwartz3,8, Avron Spiro2,9,10, Daniel K Mroczek11,12, Laura D Kubzansky5,6. 1. National Center for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, VA Boston Healthcare System, Boston, Massachusetts, USA. 2. Department of Psychiatry, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, Massachusetts, USA. 3. Department of Epidemiology, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, USA. 4. Department of Internal Medicine, Rush Medical College, Chicago, Illinois, USA. 5. Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, USA. 6. Lee Kum Sheung Center for Health and Happiness, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health; Boston, Massachusetts, USA. 7. Department of Population Medicine, Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute, Boston, Massachusetts, USA. 8. Department of Environmental Health, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, USA. 9. Massachusetts Veterans Epidemiology Research and Information Center, VA Boston Healthcare System, Boston, Massachusetts, USA. 10. Department of Epidemiology, Boston University School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, USA. 11. Department of Psychology, Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences, Northwestern University, Chicago, Illinois, USA. 12. Department of Medical Social Sciences, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, Illinois, USA.
Abstract
OBJECTIVES: Growing evidence supports optimism as a health asset, yet how optimism influences well-being and health remains uncertain. We evaluated 1 potential pathway-the association of optimism with daily stress processes-and tested 2 hypotheses. The stressor exposure hypothesis posits that optimism would preserve emotional well-being by limiting exposure to daily stressors. The buffering hypothesis posits that higher optimism would be associated with lower emotional reactivity to daily stressors and more effective emotional recovery from them. METHODS: Participants were 233 men from the Veterans Affairs Normative Aging Study who completed the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 Revised Optimism-Pessimism scale in 1986/1991 and participated in up to three 8-day daily diary bursts in 2002-2010 (age at first burst: M = 76.7, SD = 6.5). Daily stressor occurrence, positive affect (PA), and negative affect (NA) were assessed nightly. We evaluated the hypotheses using multilevel structural equation models. RESULTS: Optimism was unrelated to emotional reactivity to or recovery from daily stressors. Higher optimism was associated with higher average daily PA (B = 2.31, 95% Bayesian credible interval [BCI]: 1.24, 3.38) but not NA, independent of stressor exposure. Lower stressor exposure mediated the association of higher optimism with lower daily NA (indirect effect: B = -0.27, 95% BCI: -0.50, -0.09), supporting the stressor exposure hypothesis. DISCUSSION: Findings from a sample of older men suggest that optimism may be associated with more favorable emotional well-being in later life through differences in stressor exposure rather than emotional stress response. Optimism may preserve emotional well-being among older adults by engaging emotion regulation strategies that occur relatively early in the emotion-generative process. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America 2022.
OBJECTIVES: Growing evidence supports optimism as a health asset, yet how optimism influences well-being and health remains uncertain. We evaluated 1 potential pathway-the association of optimism with daily stress processes-and tested 2 hypotheses. The stressor exposure hypothesis posits that optimism would preserve emotional well-being by limiting exposure to daily stressors. The buffering hypothesis posits that higher optimism would be associated with lower emotional reactivity to daily stressors and more effective emotional recovery from them. METHODS: Participants were 233 men from the Veterans Affairs Normative Aging Study who completed the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 Revised Optimism-Pessimism scale in 1986/1991 and participated in up to three 8-day daily diary bursts in 2002-2010 (age at first burst: M = 76.7, SD = 6.5). Daily stressor occurrence, positive affect (PA), and negative affect (NA) were assessed nightly. We evaluated the hypotheses using multilevel structural equation models. RESULTS: Optimism was unrelated to emotional reactivity to or recovery from daily stressors. Higher optimism was associated with higher average daily PA (B = 2.31, 95% Bayesian credible interval [BCI]: 1.24, 3.38) but not NA, independent of stressor exposure. Lower stressor exposure mediated the association of higher optimism with lower daily NA (indirect effect: B = -0.27, 95% BCI: -0.50, -0.09), supporting the stressor exposure hypothesis. DISCUSSION: Findings from a sample of older men suggest that optimism may be associated with more favorable emotional well-being in later life through differences in stressor exposure rather than emotional stress response. Optimism may preserve emotional well-being among older adults by engaging emotion regulation strategies that occur relatively early in the emotion-generative process. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America 2022.
Authors: Lewina O Lee; Peter James; Emily S Zevon; Eric S Kim; Claudia Trudel-Fitzgerald; Avron Spiro; Francine Grodstein; Laura D Kubzansky Journal: Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A Date: 2019-08-26 Impact factor: 11.205
Authors: Frank J Penedo; Jason R Dahn; Dave Kinsinger; Michael H Antoni; Ivan Molton; Jeffrey S Gonzalez; Mary Anne Fletcher; Bernard Roos; Charles S Carver; Neil Schneiderman Journal: J Psychosom Res Date: 2006-04 Impact factor: 3.006