Neuroscientists have revealed the peculiarities of thinking of pessimists and optimists

A team of researchers from Kobe University found that optimists perceive the future in a similar way, while the brains of pessimists show much more individuality.

This discovery may explain why optimists are considered more sociable: they literally "see" the future in the same way, which makes communication easier.

The study was conducted by an interdisciplinary team led by psychologist Kuniaki Yanagisawa.

Details: Yanagisawa, Kuniaki, Optimistic people are all alike: Shared neural representations supporting episodic future thinking among optimistic individuals, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences(2025). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2511101122. doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2511101122

"Optimists tend to be more satisfied with social ties and have larger social networks," Yanagisawa explains. - Scientists have previously observed that the brains of people central to social groups respond to different stimuli in similar ways. We hypothesised that people with similar attitudes towards the future also literally think similarly at the brain level."

To test this hypothesis, the researchers recruited 87 volunteers with different attitudes towards life, ranging from pronounced optimists to absolute pessimists. Participants were asked to imagine various events that could happen in the future. While performing the tasks, their brain activity was recorded using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

The results of the experiments, published in the scientific journal PNAS, confirmed the scientists' expectations. In optimists, patterns of neural activity when thinking about the future turned out to be very similar to each other, and in pessimists, on the contrary, a great diversity was observed.

The authors of the study, note: "All optimists are similar to each other, while each pessimist imagines the future in a different way."

"The most surprising thing about our study is that the abstract notion of 'thinking alike' found a literal visual embodiment in the form of similar patterns of neural activity," Yanagisawa notes.

The researchers also found that optimists were much clearer in distinguishing between positive and negative future scenarios at the level of neural responses.

"This means that optimism does not involve a positive reappraisal of negative events. Rather, optimists process negative situations in a more abstract and distanced way, thereby reducing their emotional impact," the scientist emphasises.

According to the authors of the study, it is now important to understand how exactly this "general view" of optimists on the future is formed: whether it is innate or acquired with experience, for example, in the process of communication and socialisation.

"The feeling that we are 'on the same page' with someone is not just a metaphor," says Yanagisawa. - The optimists' brains literally share a common vision of the future. But this also begs new questions. We have yet to understand what exactly shapes this common mechanism and whether it is possible to change it as we go through life."

The ultimate goal of Yanagisawa and his team's research is to understand why people experience loneliness and exactly how communication between people can be improved.

"I believe that studying how this shared perception of reality arises will help us build a society where people can understand each other much better," the psychologist concluded.