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People who look on the bright side have reason to be optimistic: New research suggests they have healthier, longer lives than do pessimists.
When under unrelenting stress–in this case, the first semester of law school– students who were optimistic about doing well had more T-cells and natural killer cell activity than they had before the semester began. Among pessimists, however, these immune factors, which help thwart infection, showed little change.
The study was undertaken by psychology researchers at the University of Kentucky in Lexington; their findings appear in the June issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
