I went to the departmenal seminar yesterday... it was about Optimism and Physical Health. This lady was looking at how uplifts and hassles in our lives, affect our moods and our outlook on life (optimism and pessimism), and how these things interact.
What I thought was interesting was when they were talking about how optimism and pessimism could be 2 different constructs versus being related to each other, or 2 ends of a spectrum. They were talking about people who can be both highly optimistic and highly pessismistic, and people who are low on both measures. This lecturer at our dept came up with a briliant idea... that people who are highly optimistic and highly pessimistic may be just future-oriented people... that they think about the future more... so perhaps instead of thinking of outlook on life as positve and negative... we could look at it in the dimension of how much people think ahead of things that might happen or not.
They were talking about health behaviour as well... about moods and drinking, smoking and exercise behaviour. If I rememberd it right... her findings were... People drink more when they are very happy or when they are very sad. People smoke more when they are unhappy. People jog more when they are happy. I can vouch for the last bit. :>
Did I spell pessimism right?
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Interesting bit on the last one... From my personal experience, It seems like these happiness factors affect happiness in a much more complex way, very much similar to the affinity of haemoglobin. When you are happy, u jog more, but as u jog more, ur happiness increase further.
Same goes for drinking, when you are happy, u drink more, and when you are drunk, u become more high! Similarly, when depressed pple drink, they do not find the reprieve they need but sinks deeper into depression.
Haemogloblin? positive feedback? haha Personal experience... I jog when I'm too happy to make myself more calm... dont know how it works biologically... haha maybe the calming effect for me is just psychological.
Of course I jog when I'm stressed too... but i have other coping behaviours for stress that I would rather use when its winter ;>
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