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2013-07-10 05:44:24
Many of us categorise ourselves as either optimist or pessimist, but what can
science tell us about how we got that way and can we change, asks Michael
Mosley.
Debbie and Trudi are identical twins.
They have much in common, except that Trudi is cheerful and optimistic while
Debbie is prone to bouts of profound depression.
It is likely that her depression was triggered by a major life event, though
the twins have different views as to what that event might have been.
By studying a group of identical twins like Debbie and Trudi, Prof Tim Spector,
based at St Thomas' hospital in London, has been trying to answer fundamental
questions about how our personality is formed. Why are some people more
positive about life than others?
About the author
Michael Mosley
Michael Mosley is a medical journalist, TV presenter and trained doctor
He has regularly explored scientific questions by experimenting on himself, and
has been credited with popularising the 5:2 diet
Spector has been able to identify a handful of genes which are switched on in
one twin and not the other.
Twin studies suggest that, when it comes to personality, about half the
differences between us are because of genetic factors. But Spector points out
that throughout our lives, in response to environmental factors, our genes are
constantly being dialled up and down as with a dimmer switch, a process known
as epigenetics.
With twins like Trudi and Debbie they have found changes in just five genes in
the brain's hippocampus which they believe have triggered depression in Debbie.
Spector, who describes himself as an optimist, hopes that this research will
lead to improved treatments for depression and anxiety.
"We used to say," he told me, "that we can't change our genes. We now know
there are these mini mechanisms that can switch them on and off. We're
regaining control, if you like, of our genes."
Michael Mosley sitting in the middle of twins Debbie and Trudi Trudi (l) is an
optimist whereas her twin Debbie has suffered from depression
Even more surprising is research which has identified changes in the activity
of genes caused by the presence or absence of maternal love.
Prof Michael Meaney, from McGill University in Canada, is investigating ways to
measure how many glucocorticoid receptors are activated in someone's brain.
The number of active glucocorticoid receptors is an indicator of that person's
ability to withstand stress. It may also be a measure of how well mothered they
were at a young age - reflecting how anxious and stressed their mothers were,
and how this impacted on the amount of affection they received in their early
years.
I am one of a small handful of people who have done their test and had the
results. I haven't told my mother yet.
I see myself as being more at the pessimistic end of the spectrum but would
like to change, so I went to visit psychologist and neuroscientist Prof Elaine
Fox at her laboratory at Essex University.
Fox is interested in how our "affective mindset", the way we view the world,
shapes us. As well as using questionnaires she and her team look for specific
patterns of brain activity.
They began by measuring the levels of electrical activity on the two sides of
my brain with an electroencephalograph. It turns out I have more electrical
activity in my right frontal cortex than my left. This, Fox explains, is
associated with people who are prone to higher levels of pessimism and anxiety.
Michael Mosley with an electroencephalograph cap on to measure his brain's
electrical activity
Then I did another test, designed to measure my "negative bias". Still wired up
I was asked to press a button whenever I saw dots flashing in a particular
pattern behind faces being displayed on a computer screen. I was asked not to
focus on the faces, just on the dots.
"Sometimes," Fox says afterwards, "there was an angry face near the dots,
sometimes a happy face. Your response time to the dots was faster when they
appeared near the angry face.
10 quotes on optimism and pessimism
"A pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. An optimist sees the
opportunity in every difficulty" - Winston Churchill
"The man who is a pessimist before 48 knows too much; if he is an optimist
after it, he knows too little" - Mark Twain
"The point of living, and of being an optimist, is to be foolish enough to
believe that the best is yet to come" - Peter Ustinov
"Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed" -
Alexander Pope
"A pessimist is a person who has had to listen to too many optimists" - Don
Marquis
"An optimist may see a light where there is none, but why must the pessimist
always run to blow it out?" - Rene Descartes
"The basis of optimism is sheer terror" - Oscar Wilde
"No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars, or sailed to an
uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit" - Helen Keller
"I'm a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will" -
Antonio Gramsci
"I like pessimists. They're always the ones who bring lifejackets for the boat"
- Lisa Kleypas
Source: Goodreads, Brainyquote, Jimpoz
Discover more about the mind and body
"The reason you were faster is because your attention had already been drawn to
the angry face, even though you may not have been aware of that."
The tests confirmed I have a fundamentally negative bias. To counter this,
Elaine suggested I try a short course of CBM (cognitive bias modification) and
mindfulness meditation.
Being a pessimist, constantly on the lookout for things that can go wrong,
leads to increased stress and anxiety. And it's more than just a state of mind.
It's powerfully connected to your health.
In one study, which started in 1975, scientists asked more than a thousand
inhabitants of the town of Oxford, Ohio, to fill in a questionnaire about jobs,
health, family and attitudes towards growing older.
Decades later Prof Becca Levy of Yale University tracked down what had
happened. When Levy went through the death records she found that those who had
felt the most optimistic about growing older had lived, on average, around
seven and a half years longer than those who were more pessimistic.
It was a striking finding and took into account other possible explanations,
such as the fact that people who were more pessimistic may have been influenced
by prior sickness or depression.
Similar results emerged from a study of nuns done by Deborah Danner and others
at the University of Kentucky. They looked at the diaries of 180 Catholic nuns,
written when they had entered their nunneries in the 1930s.
Four Catholic nuns in a row Nuns living in a closed community are good for a
scientific study because they have very similar environmental experiences,
allowing more robust comparison
They then rigorously scored these diaries for optimistic or pessimistic
outlook. Nuns who live in a closed community are a good group to study because
they live in the same environment for most of their lives, eating the same
foods and having similar experiences.
When the researchers traced what had happened to the nuns they discovered that
those who expressed the most positive emotions about life when they were in
their early 20s lived up to 10 years longer than those who expressed the least.
As for me, after seven weeks of doing mindfulness meditation and CBM I felt
much calmer and returned to Prof Fox's lab for more tests. The results were
extremely encouraging.
It seems that even later in life you can change your outlook. Even for the
pessimists, that should be worth celebrating.