Cheerful children die younger than gloomy classmates, says study

Cheerfulness is not necessarily healthy. It may be widely believed that cheerful children become happy, healthy, and even wise adults who live to a good old age, but new research suggests that as adults they tend to die earlier than their less cheerful classmates.

“Children who were rated by their parents and teachers as more cheerful/optimistic, and as having a sense of humour, died earlier than those who were less cheerful,” says a report of the research (Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 2002:28; 1155-65).

In the study psychologists looked at health data on 1216 men and women who were first assessed as children in 1922, when several hundred diverse variables were recorded, and who were then monitored at intervals during their adult life.

Among the variables recorded were cheerfulness or optimism and a sense of humour, each of which was scored by parents and teachers on an 11 point scale.

The psychologists merged the data on cheerfulness with information on the time and cause of death in the people who had died and a number of other variables—including adult personality, risky hobbies, smoking, drinking, and obesity—in an attempt to explain the link between childhood cheerfulness and mortality.

“Cheerful children grew up to be more likely to die in any given year but not more likely to die of any particular cause,” says the report.

One theory, the researchers say, is that cheerful children might as adults have had poorer health behaviour because they were less concerned about things that could go wrong with their bodies.

And the results do show that children who were especially cheerful grew up to drink more alcohol, smoke more cigarettes, and engage in riskier hobbies and activities.

But the report cautions: “Although more cheerful children did grow up to smoke and drink more heavily than those less cheerful, these behaviours cannot fully explain their relatively early deaths.”

Nor did the cheerful children's greater participation in risky hobbies later in life explain their earlier deaths, say the researchers, from the University of California, the State University of New York medical school, and La Sierra University.

No evidence was found for several theories, including the possibility of a link between cheerfulness and psycho-emotional difficulties, but the report adds, “These data do hint, however, that cheerful children grow up to be more careless about their health.”

It adds, “In contrast with optimism and happiness, cheerfulness is a complex lifelong pattern that leads one in a number of directions, some of which seem to involve unhealthy habits.

“We conclude that although optimism and positive emotions have been shown to have positive effects when people are faced with short-term crisis, the long-term effects of high levels of cheerfulness are more complex and seem not entirely positive.”

Especially cheerful children grow up to drink and smoke more

Credit: JAMES FRANK/REX