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A positive outlook also guards against illness and may even increase longevity. Optimistic World War II veterans followed for 35 years after the war ended developed fewer health problems -- including hypertension, diabetes, and back trouble -- and lived longer than their pessimistic counterparts. Scientists now connect pessimism not only with depression but consider it a risk factor for disease, just like high blood pressure or smoking. Pessimists are more likely to develop physical illnesses when stressed and take longer to recover after surgery.
Children are naturally cheerful, and psychologists speculate that their emotional buoyancy may be part of our species' survival mechanism, that optimism helps protect the young from disease until they can reach puberty and reproduce. Optimism may have helped preserve the species in prehistoric times. Although realism saved cave men and women from being gobbled by tigers, without an optimistic sense of adventure, they would never have ventured away from the cave in the first place.
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