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group of psychologists analyzed the autobiographical essays nuns had written just before completing their final vows and entering a convent in the 1930s and 1940s. The scientists discovered that 90 percent of the nuns they considered the most optimistic in their essays were still alive at age eighty-four. In contrast, only 34 percent of the least optimistic were still alive. 5 Same lifestyle. Same diet. Different outlook. Furthermore, 54 percent of the most positive were still alive at age ninety-four. And after the researchers studied many other factors, the nuns’ level of optimism was the only one that had a significant correlation with life span.
    But it’s not just one study that proves the advantages of optimism for our health. A 2012 study with heart transplant patients showed that optimistic patients had a higher quality of life after transplantation and for an additional five years. Pessimistic patients, on the other hand, reported greater depression immediately after and for five years post-transplant, even if they showed no signs of depression beforehand. 6
Optimists Achieve More
    Yes, it’s true: optimists get more things done. And it’s not just because they live longer. They tend to be more persistent and resilient and so tend to achieve results—in almost any endeavor. In a large-scale experiment conducted by the pioneering psychologist Martin Seligman, a group of optimists and pessimists were recruited to become insurance sales agents. The intention of the study was to compare the sales agents’ performance. By the second year of the experiment, the optimists were outselling the pessimists by 57 percent. 7 Hey, optimism is great for business.
    Optimism also boosts achievements in athletics. Research has shown that runners who explain events optimistically perform better after receiving feedback that their time trial was somewhat slower than expected, whereas pessimists did even worse after this feedback. 8
Pessimists Are More Likely to Be Right
    Not everything in life goes an optimist’s way. Actually, far from it. For all their good fortune, you might be surprised how often optimists tend to get things wrong. 9
    In Seligman’s study, comparing insurance sales agents’ performance, the pessimists were far more accurate about predicting the conversion rates of sales calls—that is, the number of calls that resulted in an actual sale. The optimists generally got the conversion rate wrong, typically thinking it was less difficult to convert a lead into revenue. In fact, the optimists were way off in their assumptions. But did it matter? The pessimists gave up making calls earlier than the optimists, who persevered and got the extra sales. But the pessimists were right.
    Some pessimists prefer to label themselves “realists.” And that is a fair assessment: they are more realistic than optimists in their analysis of a situation—in fact, they are typically right about their assessments. The realist school justifies their mode of thinking by arguing that by being realistic about the world, they will never be disappointed or let down by events. That sounds rational. But does it work?
    The irony is that even with this play-it-safe behavior, realists are still more likely to be disappointed than optimists. This is because when something apparently bad does happen, an optimist tends to focus on the upside, while a realist focuses on the downside. Say, for example, both an optimist and a realist are turned down for a bank loan. The realist thinks, I suspected as much , and congratulates him- or herself on not having built up false hopes. The optimist, however, thinks, I now know what I need to do to increase my chances of being approved next time , and goes back for a second attempt. Guess who actually has better odds at eventually getting the loan. Yep, the optimist.
The Best Kind of Optimism
    In the early academic thinking on optimism, it was believed that optimists took responsibility for positive events