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A Smile a Day Keeps the Doctor Away
"Although there is quite a bit of talk about positive emotions being good for your health, there actually is very little evidence. This is the first study that measures emotions in initially healthy people and finds that those who are generally happier are more resistant to infectious disease," said Cohen, the Robert E. Doherty Professor of Psychology. Despite Cohen's findings that positive emotions increase a person's resistance to illness, he did not find the reverse to be true, that a negative emotional style renders someone more susceptible to disease. People with a negative emotional stylethose who are generally depressed, tense and/or hostilewere, however, more likely to report symptoms of illness that exceeded what one would expect from objective measures of their disease. Although those with positive emotional styles took better care of themselves and had lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol, the data did not account for why happier people were less likely to contract a cold. "The fact that happier people engage in health-promoting behaviors and have lower stress hormones suggests that a positive emotional style may decrease one's susceptibility to other diseases," Cohen said. Cohen collaborated on the study with researchers at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh, the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and the Medical University of South Carolina.
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