Do Optimists Live Longer? What Decades of Research Found
Optimism and a sense of purpose are linked to longer lives and better odds of reaching 85. Here is what the big studies found, and what they cannot prove.
Picture two retired teachers, both 68, both with mildly high blood pressure and a bad knee. One wakes up most days with a list of things to do: the allotment, a grandchild to collect, a history course on Thursday evenings. When the doctor mentions her cholesterol, she shrugs and says she will sort it out. The other wakes up most days braced for bad news. He assumes the knee will only get worse, that the test results will come back badly, that the best years are over.
On paper, their health is almost identical. Yet decades of research suggest their futures may not be. People who expect good things to happen, and who feel their lives have purpose, tend to live longer than people who do not, even after allowing for their health, income and habits.
About 62 million people die every year worldwide, as our live death counter shows second by second. Mindset is never written on a death certificate. But the evidence that it plays some part in how long people live has become hard to ignore.
The headline study
The most widely reported study was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) in 2019 by Lewina Lee and colleagues at Boston University and Harvard. It drew on two long-running groups: around 70,000 women in the Nurses' Health Study, followed for 10 years, and around 1,400 men in the Veterans Affairs Normative Aging Study, followed for 30 years.
Both groups filled in questionnaires measuring optimism, which the researchers defined as a general expectation that good things will happen, or a belief that the future will be favourable because we can control important outcomes.
| Group | Most optimistic quarter compared with least optimistic |
|---|---|
| Women (Nurses' Health Study) | Lived about 15% longer on average |
| Men (Normative Aging Study) | Lived about 11% longer on average |
| Women, odds of reaching 85 | About 1.5 times higher |
| Men, odds of reaching 85 | About 1.7 times higher |
These results held after the team adjusted for age, education, chronic illnesses, depression, and health behaviours such as smoking, exercise, alcohol and diet. The behaviours explained some of the link, but not all of it.
In absolute terms, a 15% longer lifespan is substantial. Applied to someone with a life expectancy of 80, it would be roughly a decade, though averages across a population cannot be translated directly into a promise for any one person.
The pattern holds across studies
The PNAS paper was not a one-off. The same link has appeared in many independent groups.
| Study | Who | Main finding |
|---|---|---|
| Levy et al., J Pers Soc Psychol 2002 | About 660 adults in Ohio, aged 50+ | Positive views of ageing linked to living about 7.5 years longer |
| Lee et al., PNAS 2019 | About 70,000 women and 1,400 men | Most optimistic lived 11 to 15% longer, more likely to reach 85 |
| Rozanski et al., JAMA Netw Open 2019 | Meta-analysis, about 230,000 people | Optimism linked to about 35% lower risk of cardiovascular events |
| Alimujiang et al., JAMA Netw Open 2019 | About 7,000 US adults over 50 | Weakest sense of purpose linked to more than double the death rate |
| Koga et al., J Am Geriatr Soc 2022 | About 160,000 older US women | Optimism linked to longer life across racial and ethnic groups |
The Rozanski meta-analysis, published in JAMA Network Open, pooled 15 studies and found that optimism was associated with about a 35% lower risk of cardiovascular events and a lower risk of death from all causes. Heart disease is the world's biggest killer, as our cardiovascular disease page shows, so even a modest effect on the heart adds up to a lot of lives.
Optimism compared with other risk factors
To put these effect sizes in context, it helps to compare them with other factors that are linked to how long people live. The figures below are rough, drawn from different studies and measured in different ways, so they should be read as a sense of scale rather than an exact ranking.
| Factor | Approximate link with risk of death |
|---|---|
| Smoking | Roughly two to three times higher risk, about 10 years of life lost |
| Physical inactivity | About 30% higher risk than meeting activity guidelines |
| Loneliness and social isolation | About 26 to 29% higher risk |
| Low optimism (least vs most optimistic) | Lifespans 11 to 15% shorter in the PNAS cohorts |
| Weak sense of purpose | More than double the death rate in one US study |
Optimism is not as powerful as stopping smoking. But it sits in a similar range to some well-established lifestyle factors, and unlike many of them, it has no side effects. Each of these factors feeds into the numbers on our live death counter in its own small way.
The nuns who wrote about their lives
One of the most memorable pieces of evidence comes from a group of Catholic nuns in the United States. In the 1930s, young women entering the School Sisters of Notre Dame were asked to write short autobiographies. Decades later, researchers Deborah Danner, David Snowdon and Wallace Friesen scored 180 of those essays for emotional content and compared the scores with how long each nun lived.
The nuns are an unusually good group to study. They lived similar lives, ate similar food, did not smoke or drink heavily, had the same access to healthcare and did not marry or have children. That removes many of the factors that usually muddy studies of lifespan.
The results, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 2001, were striking. Nuns whose early writing contained the most positive emotion lived markedly longer than those whose writing contained the least, by some estimates close to a decade on average. Words written in their early twenties predicted survival sixty years later.
Purpose may matter as much as optimism
Optimism is about expecting good things. Purpose is about having reasons to get up in the morning. The two overlap, and both seem to matter.
In the Alimujiang study of around 7,000 Americans over 50, published in 2019, people with the weakest sense of purpose in life were more than twice as likely to die during follow-up as those with the strongest. The link was particularly clear for deaths from heart disease and circulatory conditions.
Japan has a word for this: ikigai, roughly "a reason for being". In the Ohsaki cohort study of more than 40,000 Japanese adults, people who said they did not have ikigai had a higher risk of death over the following seven years, especially from heart disease and stroke. Our article on Japan's secret to living past 100 explores how purpose, community and daily routine fit together in one of the world's longest-lived populations, and the same theme appears in the Blue Zones research.
How could a mindset affect lifespan?
No one thinks positive thoughts alone keep people alive. Researchers have proposed several routes, all of which have some evidence behind them.
| Pathway | How optimism or purpose might help |
|---|---|
| Health behaviours | Optimists are more likely to exercise, eat well and not smoke |
| Medical care | Expecting things to improve makes people more likely to follow treatment |
| Stress response | Optimists may recover faster from stress, with lower stress hormone levels |
| Inflammation | Some studies link optimism to lower inflammatory markers |
| Social connection | Positive people often have larger and more supportive networks |
| Coping | Optimists tend to tackle problems directly rather than avoid them |
The stress pathway connects to our article on how stress kills. The social pathway links to the link between loneliness and early death. In practice, these routes probably work together: someone who expects good things is more likely to see a doctor, keep up with friends and stay active, and each of those habits protects health in its own right.
What the research cannot prove
This is where honesty matters. Almost all the evidence on optimism and lifespan is observational. People are not randomly assigned to be optimists or pessimists. That leaves several possible problems.
| Limitation | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Reverse causation | People who are already becoming unwell may feel less optimistic |
| Hidden factors | Wealth, education or genes could drive both optimism and health |
| Measurement | Questionnaires capture mood on the day as well as long-term outlook |
| Who is studied | Many cohorts are mostly white, educated and from rich countries |
Good studies try to deal with these issues, for example by excluding deaths in the first years of follow-up or adjusting for depression and existing illness. The link usually weakens a little but does not vanish. Even so, the most accurate summary is that optimism is consistently associated with longer life, and that some of this association is probably causal. We cannot yet say how much.
It is also worth being clear about what optimism is not. It does not mean denying problems, ignoring symptoms or feeling cheerful all the time. Unrealistic optimism, such as believing you will not get ill despite smoking, can be harmful. The kind of optimism linked to long life is closer to confidence: a belief that effort will pay off and that difficulties can be handled.
Can optimism be learned?
Optimism is partly inherited, with twin studies suggesting a genetic share of roughly a quarter. The rest is shaped by experience, and there is evidence it can shift.
| Approach | What it involves |
|---|---|
| "Best possible self" writing | Spending a few minutes imagining and writing about a future where things go well |
| Gratitude practice | Noting a few things each day that went well |
| Cognitive behavioural techniques | Spotting and challenging automatic negative predictions |
| Volunteering | Linked in several studies to greater purpose and lower death risk |
| Setting meaningful goals | Purpose grows from commitments that matter to you |
Short trials of "best possible self" exercises have shown small, real improvements in optimism. Whether these changes are large or lasting enough to add years of life has not been tested. But they are free, low-risk and good for wellbeing in their own right.
Sometimes, low optimism is a sign of depression. If you feel persistently hopeless, that is worth talking to a GP about. Our suicide statistics page lists support services, and the sibling article on the top regrets of the dying offers a gentler reflection on what people value most at the end of their lives.
What this means for you
An optimistic outlook will not cancel out smoking, heavy drinking or untreated high blood pressure. But across many studies, people who expect good things and feel their lives have purpose tend to look after themselves better, cope with stress better and live longer. The two retired teachers in the opening scene may have the same blood pressure. They do not have the same odds.
If you want to see how your other habits add up, try our risk calculator, or see how much time you might have left with the Life Clock. For the bigger picture on how emotions and health connect, read our sibling piece on whether you can die of a broken heart.
While you were reading
This article takes about 12 minutes to read. In that time, about 1,400 people died around the world, roughly 118 every minute. Most of them died of chronic illnesses that develop over decades, shaped by habits, circumstances and, the research suggests, outlook. You can follow the count in real time on our live death counter.
You cannot choose your genes or your starting point. But hope, purpose and connection appear to be among the few protective factors that cost nothing at all.
Data sources: Lee et al., "Optimism is associated with exceptional longevity in 2 epidemiologic cohorts of men and women", PNAS, 2019. Rozanski et al., "Association of optimism with cardiovascular events and all-cause mortality: a systematic review and meta-analysis", JAMA Network Open, 2019. Alimujiang et al., "Association between life purpose and mortality among US adults older than 50 years", JAMA Network Open, 2019. Koga et al., "Optimism, lifestyle, and longevity in a racially diverse cohort of women", Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, 2022. Danner, Snowdon and Friesen, "Positive emotions in early life and longevity: findings from the nun study", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2001. Levy et al., "Longevity increased by positive self-perceptions of aging", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2002. Sone et al., "Sense of life worth living (ikigai) and mortality in Japan: Ohsaki Study", Psychosomatic Medicine, 2008. Figures are rounded and describe associations, not proven cause and effect.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. If you are feeling persistently low or hopeless, please speak to your GP or contact a support service such as Samaritans.
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