Optimists are all the same – pessimists unique!

Brain scans reveal optimists share similar neural patterns when imagining the future, but pessimists seem unique.

Are you on my wavelength?

Have you got that someone who just gets you? You are “on the same wavelength.” Turns out, if you’re both optimists, you might literally be.

Kobe University psychologist Kuniaki Yanagisawa scanned 87 participants using fMRI while they imagined various future events.

The researchers focused on the medial prefrontal cortex. This is the brain region particularly active during future thinking.

When they compared brain activation patterns between participants, something striking emerged:

pairs of optimistic participants showed similar brain activation patterns, while pessimistic individuals displayed much more neural diversity.

Optimists also showed bigger differences between brain patterns for positive versus negative events than pessimists did.

As Yanagisawa explains,

“optimistic individuals typically process negative scenarios in a more abstract and psychologically distant manner, thus mitigating the emotional impact.”

Tolstoy was onto something

This isn’t the first time researchers have spotted this sort of pattern. Previous studies found similar brain patterns for people central to their social groups when compared to people further out in the network.

People who are less lonely display similar neural maps, whereas those who are more lonely show more diverse maps.

Social neuroscientist Elisa Baek calls this the “Anna Karenina principle”. The idea being that successful endeavours have similar characteristics while unsuccessful ones differ in their own ways. This phenomenon mirrors Tolstoy’s famous opening line:

“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

The research may explain why optimists tend to have larger social networks and higher peer acceptance.

When you share similar mental frameworks for imagining the future, it becomes easier to understand each other’s perspectives and form social connections.

Then again, you might just be more fun to be around!

Baby I was born this way – or was I?

As Yanagisawa puts it: “The everyday feeling of ‘being on the same wavelength’ is not just a metaphor. The brains of optimists may in a very physical sense share a common concept of the future.”

But this raises a crucial question: are optimists born with these shared neural patterns, or do they develop them through experience and social interaction?

The study also reminds us that optimism isn’t always beneficial.

Extreme optimism can lead to poor planning, while pessimism can help people prepare more thoroughly for challenges.

Plus, these traits seem to shift with age and vary across cultures, suggesting they are not fixed personality features.

The bigger picture

This research opens fascinating questions about how our brains create social bonds. If optimists really do share fundamental ways of thinking about the future, it might explain why some people instantly click while others never quite connect.

The study suggests that social success might partly depend on having compatible mental models of what’s coming next.

Whether you’re naturally optimistic or not, understanding how our brains process the future could help us build better relationships and communicate more effectively.

Leave a comment and let me know: on a scale of 0 (absolute pessimist) to 10 (supreme optimist), where would you tend to sit on average? And how does that play out in your life?

Adam S (8.2 if you’re wondering)