Psychology Commons^™

Exploring Optimism And Purpose In Life As Mediators Of The Association Between Childhood Socioeconomic Status And Common Cold Susceptibility, Stephanie Munduruca, Vivian Luong, Brooke N. Jenkins

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

According to the U.S. National Library of Medicine, Americans suffer from 1 billion colds a year. Correspondingly, previous research has shown that lower socioeconomic status (SES) during childhood is associated with lower adult health, including decreased resistance to the common cold. This correlation between childhood SES and common cold susceptibility may be mediated by an individual's optimism and purpose in life. Of interest, several studies have found evidence that higher childhood SES is associated with a higher purpose of life and higher optimism. Furthermore, previous evidence has confirmed that higher optimism and higher purpose of life are linked to better …

Development Of The State Optimism Measure, Rachel A. Millstein, Wei-Jean Chung, Bettina B. Hoeppner, Julia K. Boehm, Sean R. Legler, Carol A. Mastromauro, Jeff C. Huffman

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

Background

Optimism, or positive expectations about the future, is associated with better health. It is commonly assessed as a trait, but it may change over time and circumstance. Accordingly, we developed a measure of state optimism.

Methods

An initial 29-item pool was generated based on literature reviews and expert consultations. It was administered to three samples: sample 1 was a general healthy population (n = 136), sample 2 was people with cardiac disease (n = 96), and sample 3 was persons recovering from problematic substance use (n = 265). Exploratory factor analysis and item-level descriptive statistics were used to select …