Latest news with #optimism
Times
3 days ago
- Health
- Times
How to stop being a pessimist — by the happiness expert who knows
D o you wish you were a sunnier sort, but find yourself regularly fearing disaster in graphic, convincing detail? A new study from scientists at Kobe University in Japan has found that most optimists think alike, whereas pessimists are far more unique in their gloomy predictions. In scans, when optimists were asked to imagine future scenarios, the same areas of their brains lit up. Pessimists displayed a far more diverse range of brain activity, suggesting that they could more vividly imagine a wider sweep of worst-case scenarios. There's a strong case for wanting to work on one's optimism. 'People who are more optimistic tend to have better physical and mental health,' says Kate Oliver, a chartered psychologist and the co-author of Rise and Shine: How to Transform Your Life, Morning by Morning. Even though there's a degree of mutual causation (good health will likely make you more optimistic, for example), she says: 'Optimists tend to live longer than pessimists, have lower rates of depression and better cardiovascular health because their stress levels are lower.'
Bloomberg
6 days ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
South African Stock Index Crosses Psychological Level of 100,000
South Africa's benchmark stock index crossed the psychological level of 100,000 for the first time on optimism that a crucial budget vote will get support from key parties in the governing coalition. The index has advanced about 19% this year, hitting multiple record highs and outperforming a gauge of emerging stocks. The gains have been paced by precious metal miners including Sibanye Stillwater Ltd. and Northam Platinum Holdings Ltd.
Bloomberg
6 days ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
Crypto Firms Making Moves in the Public Market
The renewed optimism in crypto has seen a new wave of firms such as Cantor Fitzgerald and BitGo making moves in the public market. Bloomberg's Anthony Hughes reports. (Source: Bloomberg)
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Companies worldwide express lost confidence heading into Q3
This story was originally published on To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our free daily newsletter. While uncertainty is the rule for macroeconomics these days, global business leaders are increasingly aligned in their view of upcoming business prospects. And that view is a fairly dark one, as this year, companies have been steadily losing confidence in what lies ahead. According to Dun & Bradstreet's Global Business Optimism Index, based on a quarterly poll of approximately 10,000 businesses worldwide, the level of optimism heading into the third quarter was down 6.5% from three months earlier. D&B blamed slowing trade, tariff uncertainty and softening sales for the retrenchment. Other business confidence indices presented by D&B also declined entering the third quarter. The optimism falloff as reflected in the recent survey, taken in May and June, followed quarterly declines of 12.9% and 1.3% heading into this year's first and second quarters, respectively. Less than half (46%) of respondents to the most recent survey anticipated de-escalation of mounting supply chain concerns, whether through formal agreements or informal arrangements. 'While many central banks have begun cutting interest rates, this has yet to translate into better financial conditions,' D&B opined in its new quarterly report. The business analytics provider added that existing worries about supply chain vulnerabilities and geopolitical risks have worsened recently because of the escalating Iran-Israel conflict and the growing threat of disruption of key trade routes. To be sure, D&B's business optimism index is still relatively healthy in one sense. The index reading from the most recent survey was 105.6, with a reading above 100 indicating improved optimism relative to the base year of Q3 2023 through Q2 2024. Still, the recent significant dip in optimism suggests that businesses may be adopting a more cautious stance as they continue to grapple with the challenging external environment, D&B wrote. It had appeared heading into the second quarter, when optimism fell only slightly compared to the big first-quarter plunge, that 'businesses were beginning to adjust to the changing trade environment,' the report said. The recent decline in optimism was more pronounced in the manufacturing sector (-8.3%) than in the services sector (-5.4%). The most affected manufacturing segments were metals manufacturing (-14.6%), automotives (-12.5%) and capital goods (-11.1%). Those segments are more exposed to shifts in trade policy and global supply chain dependencies, D&B noted.
Yahoo
22-07-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Optimists Are Alike, but Pessimists Are Unique, Brain Scan Study Suggests
Optimists have similar patterns of brain activation when they think about the future—but pessimists are all different from one another, a brain scan study suggests 'All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.' This is the first line of Leo Tolstoy's novel Anna Karenina, and it may hold a kernel of truth that goes beyond family dynamics. In a recent study of optimism, neuroscientists found an equivalent principle at play: optimists shared similar patterns of activity in a key brain region when they imagined future events, but each pessimist's brain patterns was unique. The results help neuroscientists understand what distinguishes optimism from pessimism in the brain. This is an important question because optimism is associated with better physical, mental and social health. The results were published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA. 'We tend to think of imagining the future as a deeply personal, subjective act,' says Kuniaki Yanagisawa, the study's lead author and a psychologist at Kobe University in Japan. 'Our study, however, shows that—especially for optimists—the way our brains do this can be similar' and suggests that such shared cognitive frameworks for imagining the future might explain why we 'click' with some people, he says. Prior studies have shown that optimists have larger social networks and higher acceptance by their peers. Yanagisawa wanted to understand 'whether this social success is just about personality,' he says, 'or if optimists might share a fundamental brain mechanism that makes it easier for them to form social connections.' [Sign up for Today in Science, a free daily newsletter] The researchers scanned participants in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine while they imagined specific future events happening to either them or their spouse. Some of the events were positive; others were neutral or negative. Afterward the team had the participants take a questionnaire to determine their level of optimism or pessimism. The researchers conducted the study twice, once in a group of 37 participants and again in a group of 50. To analyze the brain scans, the researchers zoomed in on one region that's particularly active while imagining future events: the medial prefrontal cortex, located in the middle of the very front of the brain. They compared patterns of brain activation in each possible pair of participants and used statistical tests to determine how similar the activations were to each other in these pairs. The team found that only pairs consisting of two optimistic participants had similar brain activation; pairs where one or both participants were more pessimistic were dissimilar to each other. The researchers also found that optimistic people showed bigger differences between brain patterns for emotionally positive and negative events than pessimists did. A few prior studies of 'positive' social traits have shown similar results. A 2022 brain scan study showed that people who held a central position in their social network have similar activation patterns to one another—but that less central people had a lot of individual differences, or idiosyncrasies. The same pattern held true in another study of people with low versus high levels of loneliness. Elisa Baek, a social neuroscientist now at the University of Southern California and lead author of those two studies, refers to these results as examples of the 'Anna Karenina principle,' the idea that successful endeavors have similar characteristics but that unsuccessful ones are each different in their own way. 'One intriguing interpretation [of the optimism study], consistent with the Anna Karenina principle, is that there may be many different ways for a person to be pessimistic, while optimistic people tend to converge on a few shared mental models of a hopeful future,' Baek says. Together, these studies 'may point to a more general principle—that being 'on the same page' as others is a foundational mechanism that underlies the experience of social connection.' If there is an Anna Karenina principle at work for positive social traits, what would be causing it? After all, the traits we deem 'positive' vary greatly among different societies, so there's a risk of cultural bias. Yanagisawa thinks that these cultural values could actually be driving the effect—they orient people toward a specific goal that is valued in a society, such as being optimistic or having a lot of social connections, perhaps leading those individuals to behave and think similarly over time. It's also possible that optimism, as measured in this study, is picking up on related traits such as people's level of loneliness or position in a social network. 'These convergent findings raise an important question about the overlap between constructs such as optimism, loneliness and network centrality,' Baek says. 'Because the new study didn't control for loneliness or social network position, and my prior work didn't control for optimism, it is unclear how much these dimensions are overlapping or distinct.' Optimism and pessimism aren't unchanging traits; they tend to shift with age, although the trajectories vary from culture to culture. Nor is optimism an unquestioned good. 'Extreme optimism might not always be a good thing because we might not plan for the future as well as we should,' says Aleea Devitt, a psychologist at the University of Waikato in New Zealand, who studies future thinking. And 'pessimism may be a useful 'positive' trait in some situations; there's evidence that some people can be defensive pessimists, which can actually help them better prepare for the future.' Solve the daily Crossword
