Optimists Really Are on the ‘Same Wavelength’ When They Think About the Future, New Study of Brain Activity Suggests
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Optimists Really Are on the ‘Same Wavelength’ When They Think About the Future, New Study of Brain Activity Suggests
As the research participants thought about future scenarios, optimists displayed similar neural patterns, but pessimists showed more individualized brain activity
A new study reveals that optimists show similar brain activity when they think about the future, while pessimists' neural patterns are more individual. Asano Kohei, Sugiura Hitomi/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/accounts/headshot/Margherita_Bassi.png)
It turns out that being “on the same wavelength” as someone else is not just a metaphor—it’s a reality among optimists, grounded in neuroscience.
In a study straddling social psychology and cognitive neuroscience, researchers analyzed the brain activity of 87 participants as they imagined future scenarios. Some were neutral situations, while others were explicitly positive or negative, like traveling or being fired. The participants then filled out a questionnaire, which enabled the scientists to categorize each person as a pessimist or optimist. Their findings were published July 21 in the journal PNAS.
Previous research indicates that, compared to pessimists, optimists enjoy wider social circles, tend to be perceived as more likeable and are more likely to be accepted by their peers. Lead author Kuniaki Yanagisawa, a psychologist at Kobe University in Japan, thus decided to investigate whether these features are just related to personality, “or if optimists might share a fundamental brain mechanism that makes it easier for them to form social connections,” he tells Scientific American’s Allison Parshall.
Using functional magnetic resonance imaging to record brain activity, Yanagisawa and his colleagues studied the medial prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain involved in emotions and planning for the future. They revealed that the brains of people classified as optimists showed similar neural patterns while thinking about future events, whereas pessimists’ neural patterns were more individually unique.
This aligns with what’s known as the Anna Karenina principle, inspired by the Leo Tolstoy novel’s opening line: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” The idea is that positive endeavors and outcomes share similar characteristics, but unsuccessful outcomes are widely varied.
Like Anna Karenina, the researchers propose in the study that “optimistic individuals are all alike, but each less optimistic individual imagines the future in their own way.”
Key concept: Similar brain patterns in people with shared positive traits
Previous studies have shown that people with a higher social status—more central in their networks—and those with lower amounts of loneliness also share similar neural patterns in the medial prefrontal cortex.
Optimists showed greater differences in neural patterns when thinking of positive events versus negative events, compared to pessimists. In other words, optimists clearly distinguish good and bad futures in their brains—it’s not about positive reinterpretation of negative events, Yanagisawa explains in a statement. The work suggests optimists tend to consider potential negative events in a more abstract and distant way.
“We’re not saying that optimists have identical thoughts about the future, or that they imagine the exact same scenarios,” Yanagisawa tells the Guardian’s Nicola Davis. “Rather, what we found is that their brains represent future events in a similar way, especially in how they distinguish between positive and negative possibilities. So, while we wouldn’t say they have the same thoughts, we can say that they appear to think in the same way—structurally.”
This shared pattern of thought might be the reason for optimists’ social success. “It’s not just about having a positive attitude; it’s that their brains are literally on the same wavelength, which may allow for a deeper, more intuitive kind of connection,” Yanagisawa adds to the Guardian.
Tali Sharot, a neuroscientist at University College London who was not involved in the study, suggests to Nature’s Katie Kavanagh that since low optimism can be associated with poor mental health, including depression, the study has important implications for mental health research. She also proposes that the similarity in brain activity among optimists might be because “the average population looks more similar than people with mental health conditions,” which can vary widely, she tells Nature.
The study raises more questions, however, such as whether optimists are born with this shared brain activity, or if they acquire it later in life—an age-old nature versus nurture inquiry.