Construct a Personality to Support Health and Happiness

Science is showing us that there are certain personality traits that correlate with better immune function and lower incidence of disease. So if we are in control of our personalities – by deciding what beliefs to engage – why not design personalities that produce physical health?

One of Tom’s personality traits is a high level of hostility. This means that he regularly believes that other people are likely to mistreat him in some way or do something he’ll find frustrating or anger provoking. Tom and his wife Susan went to the University of California, Los Angeles to participate in research on marital disagreement along with 40 other married couples.

Tom and Susan were hooked up to various monitoring systems and asked to discuss, for 15 minutes, an issue between them that they had identified as challenging. As the conversation heated up Tom’s blood showed very high levels of cortisol (stress hormones) and elevated blood pressure.

Researchers compared Tom’s readings to that of other men in the group who tested as low hostility (that is, didn’t regularly assume other people were out to get them). They found that Tom and the other hostile men showed signs of significantly lowered immunity than the low-hostile men even though both groups of men felt angry during the discussions with their wives. Getting angry did not cause the lowered immune response, the significant factor was the habitual tendency to believe that other people are likely to cause frustration¹.

At The Option Institute we learn to find our habitual thought patterns and participate in classes that bring these belief systems out into the open. Only when we recognize these habitual patterns can we change them.

Another personality trait of interest is defensiveness. This is the tendency of a person to defend against feelings of anxiety, to avoid these feelings at all cost. Research is showing us that there maybe a health cost to doing this. Psychologists at the University of Miami found groups of people who measured as defensive (that is, reported low levels of general anxiety and high levels of wanting to appear socially desirable) and a group who were not defensive. Blood samples were analyzed for reaction to introduction of a virus. Participants were habitually defensive had much higher antibody levels suggesting poor immune control over the virus as compared to participants who tended to be more expressive about their anxiety².

All the participants went through the same procedure during the experiment. It was not a more stressful experience for the defensive group than for those who tend to express their feelings. The only difference between the two groups was that the defensive people habitually repress their feelings of anxiety. This appears to cause their immune systems to function less effectively in response to viral invasion.

Training programs at The Option Institute provide a safe, loving and non-judgmental environment that encourages people to express their emotions – all of them. Just the process of acknowledging uncomfortable feelings has the result of helping our bodies fight disease more efficiently. This is only the first step at The Option Institute. Once feelings are acknowledged we have the tools to help you change them to empower you to lead a happier and healthier life.

When something happens in our life that we don’t want to happen and we perceive as “bad” or “negative” the first thing we try to do is explain it. To create an understanding of why this happened and what it means. Although every event in our lives is of course unique we each have a tendency or a “style” of explaining events. Broadly we can all be categorized as either Pessimists or Optimists.

Psychologists measure these two explanatory styles by asking people to give an explanation of various life events. The explanations are then categorized along three separate dimensions.

Internality vs Externality: the degree to which we attribute the unwanted event to something about ourselves or to something external to ourselves (e.g “this happened because of me” vs “this happened because of the weather”).

Stability vs Instability: the degree to which we believe the event is due to long-lasting causes or to a transient cause (e.g. “it’s going to be like this forever” vs “it’ll pass”)

Globality vs Specificity: the degree to which we believe this event will impact our lives (e.g. “this will effect everything” vs “this makes no difference to my life”).

People who regularly explain unwanted life events as Internal, Stable and Global - “It’s all my fault, I’ve completely messed up my entire life!” - are categorized as Pessimists. Pessimists also tend to take the opposite approach to wanted life events – “It didn’t have anything to do with me, it’ll never last and it probably won’t make a difference anyway!”

Those who explain unwanted events as External, Instable and Specific – “This happened because of the world economy, it’ll pass and really doesn’t make any difference to my wonderful life” – are categorized as Optimists. Optimists also tend to take the opposite approach to wanted life events – “I did such a great job! This is going to make everything better forever and ever!”

A wealth of research has shown that the Optimists tend to have much better health that the Pessimists.

In an amazing thirty-five year long study researchers followed the real-life health issues of a group of 1944 Harvard graduates. At approximately age 25 these graduates we categorized as either Optimists or Pessimists in the manner described above. Extensive medical records were collected in 1944 and then regularly for the next thirty-five years until the group were all about 60 years old. The study found a significant correlation between degree of pessimism and poor health. The Pessimists were more likely to have major illness or to have died than the Optimists³.

Psychologists in California followed a group of high school students for 50 years and found that Pessimists are more likely to die an untimely death from violence or accidents than Optimists4. They found that of the three dimensions of thinking (Internality, Stability and Globality) Globality was significantly related to these untimely deaths. The belief that unwanted events will impact wide areas of ones life appears to cause men (the effect was not significant in women) to die earlier than their peers who believe unwanted events will have a smaller impact on their lives. This type of thinking is known as “catastrophizing” and is also a major component of thought patterns in people diagnosed with depression.

Other research has found that Pessimists are more likely to die of coronary heart disease than those with the disease who are Optimists^5,6 and more likely to present with flu-like symptoms⁷. Optimistic veterans have been tested to have better lung function than their pessimistic counterpart, independent of smoking⁸. Pessimists show lower immune function from blood samples⁹ and are more likely to visit a doctor than Optimists¹⁰.

Want to stay healthy? Then think like an Optimist. Learn how at the following programs:

Are you an optimist or a pessimist? When events around you seem out of control or even catastrophic do you see it as a disaster or an opportunity? Do you believe that your answers to the above questions are static or can they change if you choose to change them? Finding new ways to think about past, present and future events is one of the most effective ways to lead to increased optimism. A number of studies now show that optimists live longer, healthier lives. In Calm Amid Chaos you will learn to maintain an inner quiet and strength in the face of challenging and seemingly incomprehensible events. With strength comes optimism and with optimism comes better health.

Inner Strength is an intensive two-week fitness program for your mind and soul that will help you to develop Herculean capacity for whatever comes your way. When something happens in our life that we don’t want to happen and we perceive as “bad” or “negative” the first thing we try to do is explain it. Depending on our internal explanations we can create more stress and anxiety leading to more health problems or we can create less. When you learn to take care of yourself, no matter what, you will approach life, not as a threat but as a challenge. Less stress and anxiety leads to better overall health.

Miller, GE; Dopp, JM; Myers, HF; Stevens, SY. Psychosocial predictors of natural killer cell mobilization during marital conflict. Health Psychology. 1999; 18(3): 262–271.

Esterling, BA; Antoni, MH; Kumar, M; Schneiderman, N. Defensiveness, trait anxiety, and Epstein-Barr viral capsid antigen antibody titers in healthy college students. Health Psychology. 1993;12(2):132–139.

Peterson, C., Seligman, M. E. , Vaillant, G. E. (1988) Pessimistic explanatory style is a risk factor for physical illness: a thirty-five-year longitudinal study. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 55(1):23-7.

Peterson, C., Seligman, M. E. P., Yurko, K. H., Martin, L. R., & Friedman, H. S. (1998). Catastrophizing and untimely death. Psychological Science, Y, 127-1 30.

Sparrow, D., Vokonas, P. & Kawachi, I. (2001) Is the glass half empty of half full? A prospective study of optimism and coronary heart disease in the normative ageing study. Psychosomatic Medicine, 63(6), 910-6.

Buchanan, G. M. (1 995). Explanatory style and coronary heart disease. In G. M. Buchanan & M. E. P. Seligman (Eds.), Explanatory style (pp. 225-232). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Hemenover, S. H., & Dienstbier, R. A. (1998). Prediction of health patterns from general appraisal, attributions, coping, and trait anxiety. Motivation and Health, 22,23 1-253.

Kubzansky, L.D., Wright, R.J., Cohen, S., Weiss, S., Rosner, B. & Sparrow, D. (2002) Breathing easy: A prospective study of optimism and pulmonary function in the normative ageing study. Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 24(4).

Kamen-Siegel, L.. Rodin, J., Seligman, M.E. & Dwyer, J. (1991) Explanatory Style and cell-mediated immunity in elderly men and women. Health Psychology, 10(4): 229-35.

Peterson, C. (1988). Explanatory style as a risk factor for illness. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 12, 117-130.