Catastrophizing and untimely death

Participants in the Terman Life-Cycle Study completed open-ended questionna ires in 1936 and 1940, and these responses were blindly scored for explanat ory style by content analysis. Catastrophizing (attributing bad events to g lobal causes) predicted mortality as of 1991, especially among males, and p redicted accidental or violent deaths especially well. These results are th e first to show that a dimension of explanatory style is a risk factor for mortality in a large sample of initially healthy individuals, and they impl y that one of the mechanisms linking explanatory style and death involves l ifestyle.