Chen Ying, Kubzansky Laura D, Kim Eric S, Koga Hayami, Shiba Koichiro, Padgett R Noah, Wilkinson Renae, Johnson Byron R, VanderWeele Tyler J
Human Flourishing Program, Institute for Quantitative Social Science, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.
Department of Epidemiology, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, Kresge Building, 677 Huntington Avenue, 02115 Boston, MA, USA.
Sci Rep. 2025 Apr 30;15(1):14553. doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-77257-1.
Prior research (mainly from Western industrialized countries) documents associations between greater dispositional optimism (a generalized expectation that good things will happen) and improved health and well-being. However, less is known about whether and how levels of optimism differ across countries and across sociodemographic groups within different countries. This study presents a cross-national exploration of optimism, and its variations across sociodemographic groups. Using a sample of 202,898 adults from 22 diverse countries, we examined the relationships between optimism and key sociodemographic factors in each country separately, and cross-nationally by pooling results across countries using meta-analytic techniques. Our results suggest that mean optimism levels vary substantially across countries. Optimism also varies significantly across most of the sociodemographic factors included in our analyses. In the pooled results across countries, individuals who are older, female, married, employed, highly educated, attending religious services frequently, and native-born reported higher mean optimism levels. In the country-specific analyses, the sociodemographic variation in optimism differs across countries, indicating diverse societal influences. The findings of this study provide novel insights into the population distribution of optimism and disparities in optimism by sociodemographic groups across countries. This study provides a valuable foundation for future investigations into sociocultural influences that shape optimism.
先前的研究（主要来自西方工业化国家）记录了更高的性格乐观主义（一种好事将会发生的普遍期望）与健康和幸福改善之间的关联。然而，对于乐观主义水平在不同国家以及不同国家内社会人口群体之间是否存在差异以及如何存在差异，我们所知甚少。本研究对乐观主义及其在社会人口群体中的差异进行了跨国探索。我们使用来自22个不同国家的202,898名成年人的样本，分别考察了每个国家中乐观主义与关键社会人口因素之间的关系，并通过使用元分析技术汇总各国结果进行了跨国分析。我们的结果表明，各国的平均乐观主义水平差异很大。乐观主义在我们分析中纳入的大多数社会人口因素中也存在显著差异。在各国汇总结果中，年龄较大、女性、已婚、就业、受过高等教育、经常参加宗教活动以及本土出生的个体报告的平均乐观主义水平更高。在特定国家的分析中，乐观主义的社会人口差异因国家而异，表明存在不同的社会影响。本研究的结果为乐观主义的人口分布以及各国社会人口群体之间乐观主义的差异提供了新的见解。本研究为未来探讨塑造乐观主义的社会文化影响提供了宝贵的基础。
