Optimism is associated with high cognitive ability
Sven van zanten Published in the journal of Personality and Individual Differences , researchers were interested in investigating the associations of dispositional optimism and pessimism with cognitive abilities in adulthood. They found that young adults with higher dispositional optimism and lower pessimism had higher reasoning skills and higher pessimism was related to lower scores on memory tests for middle-aged adults. Previous research shows that optimism is related to positive health and wellbeing outcomes, whereas pessimism is associated with health-related risks and maladaptive behaviors. According to intellectual investment theories, it is suggested that personality traits can affect cognition abilities. For instance, joy promotes creativity and negative emotionality activates people’s thought-action repertoire to prepare them for quick decisions in threatening situations. People with optimistic views tend to pay attention to positive information and believe the...