Summary: A new study reveals that pessimists ‘ brains exhibit more individual variability while optimists ‘ brains exhibit strikingly similar patterns when they envision the future. Researchers discovered using imaging that optimists process both positive and negative scenarios in distinctive, common ways, which may explain their greater social connection.
Realists tend to range themselves physically from negative results rather than reinterpreting drawbacks as positives. These results provide insight into how shared emotional systems help individuals feel “on the same spectrum” and communicate more effectively.
Important Information
- Shared Patterns: When thinking about the future, innovators think about the same things.
- Emotional Disturbance: Optimists think about negative events more rationally and less physically.
- Social Link: Related future-thinking may contribute to optimists ‘ stronger social bonds.
Origin: Kobe University
Optimists ‘ brains function similarly when thinking about upcoming events, while pessimists ‘ brains display a much greater degree of liberty. The findings from Kobe University provide an explanation for why innovators are perceived as more sociable because they may reveal a future vision.
Innovators have wider social network and tend to be more content with their social interactions. What’s the cause, asks YANAGISAWA Kuniaki, a neurologist at Kobe University?
New research demonstrated that people who hold main social opportunities also react to impulses in a similar manner. Therefore, it may be that people who also have a similar outlook on the future actually picture it likewise in their minds, making it easier for them to comprehend each other’s points of view.
Yanagisawa assembled an interdisciplinary group from both the areas of social psychology and cognitive neuroscience to analyze this assumption.
This query has remained unresolved for the most part because it is situated in a gap between social philosophy and science. However, the crossing of these two areas made it possible for us to access this dark field.
They asked 87 test subjects to imagine different upcoming events, and they selected candidates who covered the entire spectrum from pessimism to optimism.
In addition to this, their brain activity was recorded using a technique known as “functional magnetic resonance imaging ( fMRI),” allowing the researchers to observe how the test subjects ‘ future thinking emerges as neural activity patterns.
The Kobe University team reports in the journal , PNAS that optimists ‘ neural activity designs are actually socially similar when they think about upcoming events.
Pessimist designs, on the other hand, showed a lot more diversity.
The crew summarizes its findings, saying that although optimistic people are both alike, each less optimistic person imagines the potential in their own way, in reference to the starting line of Leo Tolstoy’s” Anna Karenina.”
What was most remarkable about this investigation, according to Yanagisawa, is that the abstract idea of” thinking alike” was literally manifested in the form of brain activity patterns.
Additionally, Yanagisawa and his team discovered that optimists ‘ neurological designs are more pronounced when considering positive or negative events than cynics’.
This implies that more positive people’s brains can distinguish between good and bad things to come out of. In other words, optimism doesn’t require reinterpreting adverse events in a positive way.
Instead of processing negative situations in a more abstract and cognitively distant manner, he explains, “optimistic individuals usually process them in a more abstract and distant fashion, mitigating the emotional impact of such scenarios.”
The psychologist sums up the study by saying,” The common feeling of being on the same wavelength is not just a metaphor. In a very real sense, the neurons of optimists may promote a common view of the future. However, this raises fresh concerns. Do they have this shared method at birth, or is it later, such as through dialogue and experience?
The ultimate aim of Yanagisawa’s endeavor is to learn more about what causes grief and how people can communicate with one another.
He states,” I think elucidating the method by which this shared real emerges is a step toward a society where people may talk better.”
The Japan Society for the Promotion of Science ( grants JP26780342 and JP19H01747 ) as well as the Japan Science and Technology Agency ( grant JPMJRX21K3 ) provided funding for this work. It was carried out in partnership with Kindai University, Kyoto University, Osaka University of Comprehensive Children’s Education, La Trobe University, and Kyoto University.
About this announcement about science and optimism
Publisher: Daniel Schenz
Source: Kobe University
Contact: Daniel Schenz – Kobe University
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Open access to original analysis
” Enthusiastic people are most alike: Shared neural images supporting acute potential thinking among positive people” by YANAGISAWA Kuniaki et cetera. Science
Abstract
All positive people are the same: Shared neural representations support positive people’s episodic future thinking.
By focusing on positive potential outcomes and ignoring bad potential outcomes, optimism is a crucial personality trait that influences future-oriented thinking.
How does optimism modulate unique differences in acute future thinking?
Participants were scanned during an episodic future thinking task in two functional MRI ( fMRI ) studies where they were given a series of episodic scenarios with different emotional valences and asked to imagine themselves ( or their partner ) in the situation.
According to intersubject visual similarity analysis, more optimistic people had related neurological representations in the medial prefrontal cortex ( MPFC), whereas less optimistic people had more unique neuronal representations in the MPFC.
Also, individual differences in MPFC exercise revealed that the personal polarity and translational target of imagined events were evidently mapped onto various dimensions.
Notably, individuals ‘ emotional scores were closely related to their optimism scores, suggesting that those who are optimistic perceive positive events as being more specific from bad ones.
These findings support acute future thinking, which helps to distinguish between positive and negative future events, according to these findings.
