Looking on bright side of life may kill you faster Here's a bit of good news for people who like bad news: a German study suggests that people who are overly optimistic about their future actually have a higher risk of disability or death within 10 years than pessimists who expect their future to be worse. The findings, published in the March edition of Psychology and Aging, are the results of a survey of about 40,000 Germans, aged between 18 and 96, conducted every year between 1993 and 2003. Respondents were asked to estimate their present and future life satisfaction on a scale of zero to 10, among other questions. The researchers found that young adults (18 to 39) routinely overestimated their future life satisfaction, while middle-aged adults (40 to 64) more accurately predicted how they would feel. Adults aged 65 and older were far more prone to underestimate their future life satisfaction. Not only did they feel more satisfied than they thought they would, the older pessimists seemed to suffer a lower ratio of disability and death for the study period. We observed that being overly optimistic in predicting a better future than actually observed was associated with a greater risk of disability and a greater risk of mortality within the following decade, wrote lead author Frieder Lang, a psychology professor at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. Dr Lang and his colleagues hypothesised that people who are gloomy about their future may be more careful about their actions than those who anticipate a rosy one. "Perceiving a dark future may foster positive evaluations of the actual self and may contribute to taking improved precautions," the authors said. Respondents who had good health or a good income were associated with expecting a worse decline compared to those in poor health or who had a low income. A higher income was correlated with a greater risk of disability, the study found. Among the limitations to their conclusions, the authors cited illness, medical treatment and personal loss as likely to affect people's health. However, they believe there was a clear a pattern. "We found that from early to late adulthood, individuals adapt their anticipations of future life satisfaction from optimistic, to accurate to pessimistic," they concluded. Pessimistic accuracy appears to be linked with preserved functional health and better chances to survive.