The article Beautiful Minds by Scott Kaufman takes about the interface between the mind and the body. On how our outlook on adversity and how one chooses their mind set to control those problems have different results on our health. In Kaufman’s opinion there is a lack of research between having a psychological illness such as anxiety or depression and how that affects your body. Compared to not having psychological illness and having a positive attitude have on your body. They focus on the sick and not on the healthy.
Researchers have narrowed down the three different responses to adversity compared to mindset. Survival, these individuals function however they go about the functioning in an impaired manner due to the adversity. Recovery, these individuals who encounter adversity are able to overcome it returning to a previous state of people as before the adversity. Lastly thrive, these individuals are able to make adversity a moment of learning and use their struggles to perform better and as a result grow in turn. These individuals are what psychologist Martin Seligman would call an optimistic explanatory style. People who have this optimistic explanatory style
Researchers interested in the relationship between optimism and health ran an experiment of n=5134 subject and followed them over a 11 years to collect data. A 2012 study done by Julia Boehm and Laura Kubzansky found that, ‘optimism and vitality are consistently associated with reduced risk of incident cardiovascular events.’ In fact, across both healthy and patient populations, optimism was ‘the most reliably associated with a reduced risk of cardiac events.’.
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Another research conducted by the World Well-being Project conducted a study in to associate language people expose themselves on twitter to aetherosclerotic heart disease. It found the especially within the american population, the sample they acquired showed African-Americans and Hispanics were at the higher ends of optimism. With a statistical analysis using regressions they found a negative correlations depending on the type of language individuals were exposed to ranging from r= -.12, -.13, -.14, -.15, and -.17. Showing some basis for the claim that a correlation between optimism language and the attitude people approach life with has a positive effect on health specifically (AHD).
I found two things in particular to be interesting. One, the idea that the author presented about the basis on the science of research on optimism. The author revealed a disparity between the research that was being done. People were focusing on those individual who had psychological illnesses that affect the overall health of the individual but never those in infant had no illnesses but beneficial attitude that allowed the to be psychologically healthier than individual who sample were. The second thing I found interesting that I found interesting the were African- Americans and Hispanics sit on the data of optimism. Though the researched showed that among the demographic these two groups were highest it never explained the variables as to why they were the high ranking individuals.
However as all things, I am sceptical about the data and what their definition of optimistic was. Seem somewhat subjective, giving rise to many confounding and lurking variable that can begin to affect the overall r value in the data. Yes they said they ran a multivariable analysis of the data but still leaves me with some questions and concerns about the wording. Also I don’t really know if -.17 at is highest is really a large amount of significant correlation in the data. Is it practically significant to in the benefits that optimistic thinking can have on the longevity to life.
Still good effort on the lads part. The part I thought that was most significant for people to be aware of is the manner in which they choose to handle situation and the mindset they use to overcome adversity. Having an optimistic mindset isn’t just a mind set but strength of character to recognize the problem, it’s sources, and what one can do to overcome and prevent such adversities in the future. The optimistic attitude is a good one to adopt in its many benefits besides health reasons.
