Brain Facts:
Attitude

Happy Face Advantage

Smiles have an edge over all other emotional expression: the human brain prefers happy faces, recognizing them more readily and quickly than those with negative expressions—an effect know as the “happy face advantage.” Some neuroscientist suggest that the brain has a system for positive feeling that stays primed for activity, causing people to be in upbeat moods more often than negative, and to have a more positive outlook on life.

MacArthur Study Positive Attitude
—Confidence

Having a positive attitude often leads to increased self-confidence, because with a positive attitude we are more likely to believe that we can solve problems and exert control over our environment and ourselves. In the MacArthur Study, investigators found that study volunteers who rated high in self-confidence were more likely to believe that they could improve and maintain their memory skills.

Mayo Clinic
—Optimism

A recent Mayo clinic study found that individuals scoring high in optimism on the MMPI (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory) were 50 percent more likely to survive the next thirty years than pessimists were. These optimists also had fewer physical and emotional difficulties, were less limited by pain, enjoyed higher energy levels, and were generally happier and calmer.

Positive Outlook

Scientific evidence shows that keeping a positive outlook helps us to stay healthy and live longer. In a recent study, positive and satisfied middle-aged people were twice as likely to survive over a period of twenty years, as compared to more negative individuals. Optimists have fewer physical and emotional difficulties, experience less pain, enjoy higher energy levels, and are generally happier and calmer. Positive thinking has been found to boost the body’s immune system so we can better fight infection.

Positive Thinking and Health

Researchers at Aarhus University Hospital in Denmark considered another possible mechanism for the connection between Positive thinking and health—the immune system, the body’s means for fighting off infection. In looking at more than three hundred volunteers between the ages of seventy and eighty-five, they found that those who continually ruminated on negative thoughts had higher counts of white blood cells, as if their bodies were trying to fight off a disease. This suggests that negativity may have an adverse effect on health by actually stimulating a physiological response.

Predict Happiness
—Thoughts to Decision

How do we actually feel when the results of a financial decision—whether good or bad—truly hit home?
According to their findings, practically everything we do in life is based on mechanisms our minds have build for predicting how the outcomes of our decisions are going to make us fee. These mechanisms are what prod us to buy stuff we think will make us happier, and to attempt career moves that we believe will deliver a bigger taste of our life’s potential.

Zack Lynch
The Neuro Revolution
p. 86

Priming

Priming is the idea that someone’s attitudes or concepts can be activated by subtle cues, without the person’s conscious awareness.

Zack Lynch
The Neuro Revolution
p. 206

Self Limits

“Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.”

Sense of Well Being

Scientists in Finland studied the impact of a sense of well-being and happiness on longevity and found that satisfied people were twice as likely to survive after twenty years compared with individuals who claimed to be dissatisfied.

Wake Forest University
—Joy

A recent study from Wake Forest University found that when we make a conscious effort to experience joy and happiness, it pays off. Dr. Will Fleeson and colleagues found that study volunteers actually felt happier when they acted more extroverted—singing aloud, walking over and talking to someone, or being more assertive and energetic—and other people perceived them as happier, too.

Yale University

Dr. Becca Levy and her associates at Yale University explored the influences of attitude on life expectancy in a study that followed over seven hundred individuals for more than two decades. They found that older people who reviewed again in a positive light lived seven and a half years longer than those who saw aging as a more negative experience.