Essential
- When optimistic people are thinking about the future, their brain works in a similar way.
- They had very close neural activity schemes, according to the results of the functional MRI.
- On the other hand, the brains of the pessimists presented little operating similarities when they imagined the future.
Do optimists who see the future positively, think about it in the same way? This is the question posed by the psychologist Kuniaki Yanagisawa from the University of Kobe (Japan). And what about pessimists? The tests he carried out on 87 participants allowed him to provide answers to his questions.
The brain of optimists “works” in the same way. On the other hand, this is not the case for that of negative people.
Optimism: similar neural activity schemes
To fully understand the optimistic thought processes, researchers asked volunteers from very different backgrounds to imagine future events. Their brain activity was recorded through a functional MRI. Scientists could thus observe how their reflections on the future materialize in their brain, what were the activated neural activity patterns.
The team then made an observation: when positive people think of the future, their neural activity patterns are very similar. Which was not at all the case among the group of pessimists. There was great diversity in the neural circuits used.
Inspired by the first sentence ofAnna Karénine From Tolstoy, the authors sum up in their press release: “Optimistic individuals are all similar, but each less optimistic individual imagines the future in his own way “. Kuniaki Yanagisawa Specise on his side : “The most striking in this study is that the abstract notion of” thinking in the same way “has been literally made visible in the form of brain activity diagrams.”
Being on the same wavelength is a reality … for optimists
The work presented in the PNAS journal, highlighted another difference: the neural patterns used during a reflection on positive or negative events differ more in optimists. “This means that more optimistic people perceive a clear distinction between a positive future and a negative future in their brain. In other words, optimism does not imply a positive reinterpretation of negative events. On the contrary, optimistic people generally deal with negative scenarios in a more abstract and psychologically distant way, thus mitigating their emotional impact”explains the principal author.
“The daily feeling of being on the same wavelength is not a simple metaphor. The brain of optimists can, in a very physical way, share a common conception of the future”adds the scientist to conclude.