Is the glass half empty or half full? A prospective study of optimism and coronary heart disease in the normative aging study

Objective: A sense of optimism, which derives from the ways individuals exp lain causes of daily events, has been shown to protect health, whereas pess imism has been linked to poor physical health. We examined prospectively th e relationship of an optimistic or pessimistic explanatory style with coron ary heart disease incidence in the Veterans Affairs Normative Aging Study, an ongoing cohort of older men. Methods and Results: In 1986, 1306 men comp leted the revised Minnesota Multiphasic Personality inventory, from which w e derived the bipolar revised Optimism-Pessimism Scale. During an average o f 10 years of follow-up, 162 cases of incident coronary heart disease occur red: 71 cases of incident nonfatal myocardial infarction, 31 cases of fatal coronary heart disease, and 60 cases of angina pectoris. Compared with men with high levels of pessimism, those reporting high levels of optimism had multivariate-adjusted relative risks of 0.44 (95% confidence interval = 0. 26-0.74) for combined nonfatal myocardial infarction and coronary heart dis ease death and 0.45 (95% confidence interval = 0.29-0.68) for combined angi na pectoris, nonfatal myocardial infarction, and coronary heart disease dea th. A dose-response relation was found between levels of optimism and each outcome (p value for trend, .002 and .0004, respectively). Conclusions: The se results suggest that an optimistic explanatory style may protect against risk of coronary heart disease in older men.