04. The Biology of Optimism

Hi friends,

Welcome to the fourth dispatch of How Humans Flourish, a research-informed newsletter on how humans thrive. 

Before we dig in, thrilling news:

I launched my startup break*through with the mission to pioneer empathy-driven technologies that increase access to holistic wellbeing. After months of steadfast planning, building, and piloting, our first AI-digital product is finally here.

Our AI product increases member retention for wellness and healthcare organizations through the customization of AI health and wellness community managers. These dynamic AI companions take groups of patients through cohort-based, gamified wellness challenges.

The experience? Phenomenal. The impact? Outstanding.

Our managers seamlessly connect people with relevant programs, products, and information boosting 44% growth in meaningful engagement week after week.

We’ll be releasing case studies soon, but in the meantime, you can take a peek at our new website here. 

If you’re interested in learning more about how these fully customizable AI friends work, feel free to reach out.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming.

It’s our last week exploring esteemed psychologist Dr. Martin Seligman’s book, Flourishing: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being and one of the key take-aways has been his rallying cry to reframe our goals around mental health. 

According to Dr. Seligman, modern-day psychiatry is designed to relieve human misery (which is a tall order in and of itself), but it’s a mistake to assume good mental health is equal to the absence of mental illness. He cites, on the rare occasions patients with anxiety, depression, and anger are actually able to get rid of their overwhelming negative emotions, they are not suddenly happy…instead, they just feel empty. 

And if extrapolated out, Dr. Seligman asks, don’t modern-day healthcare systems accept the same wisdom about physical health? That physical health is merely the absence of physical illness?

If positive mental health is “the presence of positive emotion, the presence of engagement, the presence of meaning, the presence of good relationships, and the presence of accomplishment,” (p. 214) what of positive physical health?

With this question in mind, Dr. Seligman partnered with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to conduct research that asked the questions, “Are there positive properties–health assets– that constitute an actual state of physical health? Is there a state that increases longevity, which decreases morbidity, which results in a better prognosis when illness finally strikes, and which decreases lifetime health care costs? Is health a real thing, or is all that medicine needs to be after is the absence of illness?” (pg. 215)

To begin answering these questions, Dr. Seligman first had to revert back to the research he’d pioneered earlier in his career, that of learned helplessness.

To succinctly summarize: learned helplessness is a state of being defined by a deep conviction that nothing you do can or will alter an event. 

In his studies, Dr. Seligman found that if mammals are confronted with an excruciating hardship they are able to escape from, eventually they will recover from the experience with a sense of agency. By themselves or with professional support they will access what we discussed last week– Post-Traumatic Growth.

However, if individuals experience an excruciating hardship they cannot escape from (i.e. literally being held down during a burglary), they adopt a state of passivity that colors all they currently experience and will experience in the future. 

Personally, this was a big aha moment for me while building break*through. 

In realizing that immobilization is at the root of most trauma, any wellness technology that services heterogenous populations with varying degrees of trauma, must have a component of agency reclamation. It’s not enough to name or know the problem, there must be a pathway towards self-sovereignty.

But, how?

In his studies, privy to the many cases of people becoming sick and even dying when in a continued state of helpless passivity, Dr. Seligman wondered if “learned helplessness could somehow reach inside the body and undermine health and vitality.” He also wondered about the inverse, “could the psychological state of mastery—the opposite of helplessness—somehow reach inside and strengthen the body?” (p. 217).

While conducting studies with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Dr. Seligman focused on finding people who never became helpless, regardless of what they’d experienced in life. He then codified the way this group of people interpreted bad events. 

His findings? 

“People who believe that the causes of setbacks in their lives are temporary, changeable, and local do not become helpless readily… They bounce back quickly from setbacks… We call them optimists. Conversely, people who habitually think, it’s going to last forever, it’s going to undermine everything, and there’s nothing I can do about it, become helpless readily. They do not bounce back from defeat... We call them pessimists.” (pg. 221)

While this finding wasn’t so surprising to me, what was surprising is what this means for specific medical diagnoses. 

For example, when it comes to cardiovascular disease, the leading cause of death for men, women, and people of most racial and ethnic groups in the United States, “all studies of optimism converge on the conclusion that optimism is strongly related to protection from cardiovascular disease.” (pg. 227)

In one of the largest studies on the relationship between optimism and cardiovascular disease, 97,000 women were followed for eight years. From the start of the study, researchers recorded age, race, education, religious attendance, states of depression, health, body mass, alcohol, smoking, blood pressure, and cholesterol levels. They then measured participants’ optimism through the Life Orientation Test, which asks statements such as: “In unclear times, I usually expect the best,” and “If something can go wrong for me, it will.”

The results?

Optimists had 30 percent fewer coronary deaths than pessimists. The trend of fewer deaths, both cardiac and deaths from all causes, held across the entire distribution of optimism. 

What’s most impressive though, is that in every study done after this one in 1994, this finding is repeatedly confirmed (you can review some of these studies here: study 1, study 2, study 3, study 4, and study 5).

There is another philosophy similar to optimism that also seems to protect against cardiovascular disease: ikigai. This Japanese concept means having something worth living for, and is intimately related to one of the pillars of human flourishing (meaning and purpose). There are three Japanese studies of ikigai (study 1, study 2, and study 3), and all point to high levels of ikigai reducing the risk of death from cardiovascular disease, even when controlling for traditional risk factors and perceived stress. In one study, the mortality rate from cardiovascular disease among men and women without ikigai was 160 percent higher than that of men and women with ikigai. 

(Fun fact: ikigai-based exercises feature prominently in the curriculums we create for courses and challenges at break*through.)

It’s heady to think that our mindset can impact our physiology… but, only if we think there’s a disconnect between the two.

But, as I always like to ask, to what end? How far does the mind-body connection go?

To answer this, we must leave the world of Dr. Seligman, and visit the world of Dr. Bessel van der Kol, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. 

Ready to continue down the rabbit hole?

Hold onto your coattails friends, we’re just getting started.

With gratitude,

P.s. There is someone who adamantly disagrees with Dr. Seligman’s research. Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America. Barbara believes optimism has become a nefarious cult-like ideology impacting religion, psychology, and business. While I agree with her that shallow positivity is not helpful, the research around optimism speaks for itself. I’m curious, what do you think?