I'm here to tell you: it is.

Optimistic adults are less lonely, more popular, and have better relationships.

Optimism has even been associated with faster recovery from and fewer complications after heart surgery.

Finally, and perhaps most important, in circumstances ranging from everyday life to in vitro fertilization to caring for a sick spouse, people who expect positive futures are happier and more satisfied with their present lives than people who expect negative futures.

So the question isn't whether optimistic people are happier, healthier or more fulfilled. No, the real question is: where do these happy, healthy, resilient, optimistic adults come from?

How does one child develop into an adult who looks into the future with anticipation and confidence and another into an Eeyore? In most cases, genes and infant temperament give a good clue as to childhood and adult personality. For example, relaxed babies tend to grow up into sociable children and adults, and tense babies tend to grow up into inhibited children and adults. Twin studies show that about 50% of most broad personality characteristics (like extraversion) are genetic and that sibling similarity is mostly due to genetic overlap.

Optimism is different.

Twin studies show that optimism is only half as heritable as most personality characteristics. That means that only a quarter of the differences between people in their attitudes about the future come from their genes. The rest, by definition, must come from experiences. And new research is pointing toward one important childhood experience: The family environment.

An optimistic parent starts her children out on a path to their own optimism by giving them optimistic genes. But that's only the start. Optimistic parents also act as role models for their children. Children learn a lot about the world by observing others (hence the concern about children's exposure to violent television shows and video games). Their observations are especially influential when they learn what is likely to get them rewarded and what is likely to get them punished. Children are likely to mimic what they observe when they see someone rewarded for his or her actions. And parents, you already know: your children are watching you! Optimists are more likely than pessimists to remember their parents being optimistic, encouraging, and happythat is, as role models for optimism.

Parents who express positive beliefs about the future do model optimism for their children. What's more, they show children how to behave in ways that bring a positive future about by being persistent in working toward important goals.

Sometimes optimism's rewards aren't obvious (for example, recovery from cardiac surgery). Other times, they are. Perhaps your parent launched a campaign to pass a new school bond or, perhaps more influentially, launched more than one campaign until the school bond passed (as he or she knew it would). Psychology has made it very clear that being committed to a goal is one of the best predictors of the rewards of reaching that goal. Seeing the rewards of positive beliefs and persistence may have been the wellspring for your own optimism, because children who see their parents optimistic, engaged, happy, and successful are influenced to adopt similar views.

Humans are designed to want and need social relationships. For our ancestors, those relationships were critical for survival: Early humans necessarily relied on each other for sustenance and protection. The remnants of those ancestral needs show up even today, when relationships are still critical for mental and physical health. For example, adults with few relationships die sooner, and the increased risk of death associated with a sparse social network is the same as that associated with smoking cigarettes.

If social relationships are important to survival for adults, consider how much more important those relationships are to children, who require adults to provide for them. Even some normal developmental processes rely on social interaction: children do not develop normal language without exposure to other people's speech. Likewise, it seems that children who develop faith that they will be provided with the most important childhood resource parental acceptance and caring will have more confidence in and optimism about their futures.

A large study of almost 20,000 adults at the University of Turka, Finland, shows how optimism results from resources, particularly parental resources, in childhood. Adults who recalled warm, close parent-child relationships were more optimistic in adulthood. Conversely, the social and financial integrity of the family, another important resource for a small child, is threatened by conflict within the family and by divorce. Adults who experienced family conflict and divorce as children were less optimistic as adults, and those whose families had experienced financial problems when they were children were also less optimistic. However, these threats conflict, divorce, and financial instabilitywere less important than the parent-child relationship. Warm, close relationships compensated in some degree for any problems experienced by the family. Suppose young Lisa's parents were unemployed and divorcing, but she had a good relationship with both of them. Her optimism as an adult would likely be higher than Katarina's, who experienced neither conflict nor financial difficulty, but had a poor relationship with her mother. At least in early to middle childhood, the quality of child-parent relationships is the most important resource for the child and an important force in shaping that child's later optimism.

One problem with studies that ask people what their childhoods were like is that an optimistic person may remember childhood differently than a pessimistic person. Because optimists are more likely to pay attention to positive aspects of their environment, an optimistic child might have noticed more warmth from her mother than a pessimistic child. Childhood optimism could therefore cause both a positive perception of parents and adult optimism without the former necessarily causing the latter. However, additional observations have shown that a mother's perception of her child at ages 3 and 6 accounts for that child's optimism at ages 24 and 27. Mothers who enjoyed being with their children more, who were more comfortable with their children, and who felt their children needed less strict discipline had more optimistic adult children. The relaxed, happy, and comfortable parent-child relationship added an additional 5% of adult optimism to the 25% genetic endowment.

A warm, comfortable, and secure relationship depends on a child knowing that his parent loves him. Some parents might feel pressure to be uncritical of their children or even to try to build up their self-esteem. However, it is important to remember that self-esteem does not cause children to believe in their resources or ability; resources and ability cause children to believe in themselves. For example, getting better grades in school leads to higher self-esteem, but higher self-esteem doesn't lead to better grades (indeed, one study found that efforts to help students raise their self-esteem actually hurt their grades). If you're looking to instill optimism in your kids, you need to balance being warmly supportive of your children's achievements while being honest about their failures. While very young children often have inflated beliefs about their own superiority, kids in elementary school are able to put things or people in rank order. Children this age may realize that they are not objectively superior in every way, but telling them so might actually erode trust. The key is to be honest with them, without being harsh or cold. Yup, it's a balancing act with critical ramificationsone of many tightropes you walk as a parent.

Optimists remember their relationships with their parents as less critical, hostile, or rejecting. However, many children also have additional family relationships: with siblings. Even though sibling squabbling is as inevitable as death and taxes, some sibs get along better than others, and one way to minimize the friction is to put a couple of optimists together: Optimists remember their relationships with their siblings as warm (like their relationships with parents) and less characterized by sibling rivalry. How can parents help kids get along? Psychologists think that one possible source of sibling rivalry is competition for scarce resources: Not food or water, but affection and attention. Parents who want their kids to get along will make sure that all of them are getting enough of a factor that not only promotes harmony but also creates optimists: comfortable, warm, secure parenting.

Did you ever want to trade places with a brother or sister? The answer to this question is revealing. Wanting to be more like an older sibling reflects a desire for more: more freedoms; more abilities; more opportunities. Wanting to be more like a younger sibling reflects a desire for less: less responsibility, less challenge. Optimists remember wanting to trade with an older sibling, whereas pessimists remember wanting to trade with a younger sibling. This pattern reveals again the motivational differences between optimists and pessimists. Wanting to be more grown-up is consistent with looking forward in life with hope and enthusiasm, whereas wanting to be younger is consistent with looking backward with wistfulness and even some sense of hopelessness or dread when looking toward the future.

Expectations begin at home, but they eventually affect social behavior both within and outside the family and even other behaviors. It isn't a long stretch to hypothesize that the same child might take the confidence and positive expectancies built within the family and apply them to build resources that aren't necessarily social, such as sports, games, or school. A positive parental relationship that provides the most important early resource can initiate the upward spiral of positive expectancies and accomplishments.

Once warm, stable relationships are established within the family, children find themselves in good position to form relationships outside the family. A child who finds that loving overtures to her father, mother, or sibling are returned in kind is more likely to make friendly overtures to other children. As it turns out, these overtures are perhaps the best way to establish friendships. When researchers at the University of Kyvaskyla, Finland, observed how relationships formed in a 6-month educational program for young adults, they found that optimists ended up more popular than pessimists that is, other students were more likely to say they knew optimists best and that optimists were their friends. Why? Optimists talked to people about their problems, initiated group activities, and so on. In contrast, pessimists were not well known to their peers because they tended to avoid social activities. Expecting acceptance leads optimists to build even more friendships, whereas expecting rejection leads pessimists to withdraw and become isolated. In both cases, the expectation is realized.

These peer relationships become increasingly important, so that by the time children grow to young adulthood it seems that relationships with parents have become less influential for a young adult's optimism. Developmental psychologist Erik Erikson pointed out that There is no workable future [for a child] within the womb of his family. Just as much as a young antelope or baboon necessarily becomes less and less dependent on its mother or its natal troop as it develops, young humans evolve into independent adults and begin to locate their resources outside the nuclear family. As they develop, children take more and more control over their own behavior, their resources, and therefore their optimism.

Still, the upward spiral continues. In the same way that the strength of the parental relationship in childhood leads to adult optimism, growth in one's social network in early adulthood leads to more optimism in middle adulthood, and even among centenarians, more family, friends, and visitors are associated with a more optimistic outlook on life, which in turn is associated with greater happiness. Optimistic expectations that begin at home may set up a pattern of social involvement that can feed forward for a lifetime.

If you're not a naturally optimistic person, you're probably thinking Great, my kid is doomed. Actually, that's not true at all. Remember, optimism is only 25% inheritedthe rest is a combination of nurture and experience. So even if you're not naturally optimistic, you can provide your children with experiences that can help them to be.

This means working harder at viewing the world through an optimistic prism. It means consciously choosing to see the glass as half-full, and exemplifying this conscious choice to your kids. It means building a warm and loving relationship with your children, which provides them with the tools to build such relationships with others.

Raising optimistic children really boils down to this: filling the proverbial glass. Pour in warmth, comfort, and, yes, a certain amount of optimism and your kids will learn to see the glass as half full. No, they may not become Pollyanna incarnate. But they will end-up being healthier and more satisfied in their lives and in the end, isn't that what most of us want for our kids?

Breaking Murphy's Law: How Optimists Get What They Want From Life And Pessimists Can Too Dr. Suzanne Segerstrom has spent her professional life researching the effects of optimism on the immune system. Her research has been published in numerous scientific journals, but this is her first book. Although it's backed with solid scientific data, it doesn't read at all like a staid journal article. Instead, it's a lively discussion of how having an optimistic outlook can make your life bettermeasurably so, if the studies are to be believed. Segerstrom's writing is accessible to non-scientistsin fact, it's downright funny: her admonition to kill your television is followed by a footnote in which she confesses to having three TVs in her house and possibly one more in the basement (but since the basement is her husband's territory, she admits he could have a pony stabled down there and she wouldn't have a clue). The book peppers scientific data with pop culture: are you a Will or a Grace? Is there hope for an Eeyore? It also clearly explains the tools optimists use to navigate lifeand how dyed-in-the-wool pessimists can learn these tactics. This is important for parents who wish to raise optimistic kids, especially if the parents themselves aren't naturally optimistic.