“Our findings revealed that being overly optimistic in predicting a better future was associated with a greater risk of disability and death within the following decade<\/strong>,” said lead author Frieder R. Lang, PhD, of the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany. “Pessimism about the future may encourage people to live more carefully, taking health and safety precautions.” The study was published online in the journal Psychology and Aging\u00ae<\/sup>.<\/em><\/p>\n Lang and colleagues examined data collected from 1993 to 2003 for the national German Socio-Economic Panel, an annual survey of private households consisting of approximately 40,000 people 18 to 96 years old. The researchers divided the data according to age groups: 18 to 39 years old, 40 to 64 years old and 65 years old and above<\/strong>. Through mostly in-person interviews, respondents were asked to rate how satisfied they were with their lives and how satisfied they thought they would be in five years.<\/p>\n Five years after the first interview, 43 percent of the oldest group had underestimated their future life satisfaction, 25 percent had predicted accurately and 32 percent had overestimated<\/strong>, according to the study. Based on the average level of change in life satisfaction over time for this group, each increase in overestimating future life satisfaction was related to a 9.5 percent increase in reporting disabilities and a 10 percent increased risk of death, the analysis revealed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From the American Psychological Association press release via HealthCanal: Older people who have low expectations for a satisfying future may be more likely to live longer, healthier lives than those… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[321,5,10],"tags":[12],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11226"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11226"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11226\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11356,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11226\/revisions\/11356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Aging](\"http:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/images\/blogpics\/senior_checkers_game.jpg\")
Older people who have low expectations for a satisfying future may be more likely to live longer, healthier lives<\/strong> than those who see brighter days ahead, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association.<\/p>\n