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Is the glass half empty or half full? A prospective study of optimism and coronary heart disease in the normative aging study (2001)
| Venue: | Psychosomatic Medicine |
| Citations: | 46 - 0 self |
BibTeX
@ARTICLE{Kubzansky01isthe,
author = {Laura D. Kubzansky and David Sparrow and Pantel Vokonas and Ichiro Kawachi},
title = {Is the glass half empty or half full? A prospective study of optimism and coronary heart disease in the normative aging study},
journal = {Psychosomatic Medicine},
year = {2001},
pages = {910--916}
}
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Abstract
Objective: A sense of optimism, which derives from the ways individuals explain causes of daily events, has been shown to protect health, whereas pessimism has been linked to poor physical health. We examined prospectively the relationship of an optimistic or pessimistic explanatory style with coronary heart disease incidence in the Veterans Affairs Normative Aging Study, an ongoing cohort of older men. Methods and Results: In 1986, 1306 men completed the revised Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, from which we derived the bipolar revised Optimism-Pessimism Scale. During an average of 10 years of follow-up, 162 cases of incident coronary heart disease occurred: 71 cases of incident nonfatal myocardial infarction, 31 cases of fatal coronary heart disease, and 60 cases of angina pectoris. Compared with men with high levels of pessimism, those reporting high levels of optimism had multivariate-adjusted relative risks of 0.44 (95 % confidence interval 0.26–0.74) for combined nonfatal myocar-dial infarction and coronary heart disease death and 0.45 (95 % confidence interval 0.29–0.68) for combined angina pectoris, nonfatal myocardial infarction, and coronary heart disease death. A dose-response relation was found between levels of optimism and each outcome (p value for trend,.002 and.0004, respectively). Conclusions: These results suggest that an optimistic explanatory style may protect against risk of coronary heart disease in older men. Key words: coronary disease, optimism, pessimism, explanatory style, stress. BMI body mass index; CABG coronary artery bypass graft; CAVE content analysis of verbatim explanations; CHD coronary heart disease; CI
Keyphrases
coronary heart disease glass half normative aging study prospective study angina pectoris high level coronary heart disease death confidence interval chd coronary heart disease ongoing cohort multivariate-adjusted relative risk explanatory style poor physical health cabg coronary artery bypass graft daily event incident coronary heart disease pessimistic explanatory style bmi body mass index nonfatal myocardial infarction cave content analysis whereas pessimism fatal coronary heart disease nonfatal myocar-dial infarction minnesota multiphasic personality inventory veteran affair normative aging study incident nonfatal myocardial infarction optimistic explanatory style optimism-pessimism scale way individual dose-response relation key word coronary disease coronary heart disease incidence verbatim explanation
