Study: Happiness fights colds; Has other health benefits

We all know that it's good to be positive but a new Carnegie Mellon study shows that there is scientific backing for that belief and that happiness and other positive emotions play an even more important role in health than previously thought.

[The CMU] study confirms the results of a landmark 2004 paper in which Cohen and his colleagues found that people who are happy, lively, calm or exhibit other positive emotions are less likely to become ill when they are exposed to a cold virus than those who report few of these emotions. In that study, Cohen found that when they do come down with a cold, happy people report fewer symptoms than would be expected from objective measures of their illness. In contrast, reporting more negative emotions such as depression, anxiety and anger was not associated with catching colds.

Due to limitations of that study, however, it was possible that "the greater resistance to infectious illness among happier people may not have been due to happiness, but rather to other characteristics that are often associated with reporting positive emotions such as optimism, extraversion, feelings of purpose in life and self-esteem."

The new study is important in that it controlled for those variables and still came up with the same result of positive people being less likely to catch colds and also to report less symptoms when they do get sick. This result held true regardless of their levels of optimism, extraversion, purpose and self-esteem, and of their age, race, gender, education, body mass or prestudy immunity to the virus.

As Doug Manning at Third Age quips, "these results should surprise no one [especially our moms who] may have been right about the power of a sunny disposition [all along].

Best of all it's not too late to put more happiness in your life. Read about Martin E.P. Seligman, the father of positive psychology, and also this book which is about turning pessimists into optimists.