In 2001, American researchers published an article in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology showing their findings that describing our lives in positive ways can help us live longer.
The researchers analyzed the autobiographies of 180 Catholic nuns. These nuns wrote their biographies when they were between the ages of 18 and 32 (leaning to the younger end of the spectrum with a mean age of 22). The counted the positive sentences in the autobiographies, and organized them into 4 groups (quartiles), depending on the percentage of positive words.
The researchers conducted 4 types of analysis:
- Relationship between mortality risk and the percentage of positive, negative, and non-emotion sentences in the autobiographies
- Relationship between mortality risk and the quartile ranking of positive words
- Life length based on the quartile rankings in #2
- Controlling for linguistic ability, education level, and occupation
What they discovered was that for the nuns in each quarter, life expectancy increased with the increase in positive words:
The median age at death was 86.6 years for those in the lowest quartile for the number of positive emotion sentences, 86.8 for the second quartile, 90.0 for the third quartile, and 93.5 for those in the highest quartile, that is, a difference of 6.9 years between the highest and lowest quartiles of positive emotion sentences.
Controlling for linguistic ability, education level, and occupation had little effect on the difference in mortality rate.
So, what can we take from this. Well, having a positive life can lead to a longer life. Or more specifically describing our life in positive ways can lead to a longer life.
How do you describe your life?