Optimism in our genes…
ON THE positive side, optimism appears to be another almost universal human characteristic, Deborah Smith reports in the Sydney Morning Herald.
A survey of more than 150,000 people worldwide shows that 95 per cent of individuals expect their life in five years to be as good or better than it was five years ago.
Ireland, Brazil, Denmark and New Zealand have the highest levels of optimism, while Zimbabwe, Egypt, Haiti and Bulgaria have the lowest. Australia ranked 12th and the United States was at position 10 in the World Gallup Poll survey of about 1000 people in 140 countries – a representative sample of 95 per cent of the globe’s population.
"These results provide compelling evidence that optimism is a universal phenomenon," says Matt Gallagher, a psychology researcher at the University of Kansas, who analysed the data.
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