It’s arduous to inform if a rooster is an optimist. In any case, you may’t ask it if a glass of water is half full or half empty. However you may repeatedly present it a white card in entrance of a bowl of tasty mealworms and a black card in entrance of an empty bowl. As soon as a chick has realized to reliably select the white card, you present it a gray card. Chicks that head instantly for this card apparently surmise that it’s extra white than black, and thus in all probability accommodates meals – the equal of deeming a glass half full. On this foundation, most chickens do certainly transform “optimistic”.
You may check optimism-like behaviour in lots of animals – and even fine-tune it. European starlings turn out to be extra “optimistic” if they’ll take a shower each time they need. Bottlenose dolphins present extra optimistic behaviour if they’ve been swimming in synchrony with one another. Bumblebees make extra optimistic decisions after being given an surprising candy deal with.
These findings might sound eccentric, however the truth that optimism, of a kind, seems in such a variety of animals suggests {that a} constructive outlook is perhaps necessary in our personal lives – and that it’s deeply linked to our well-being. In recent times, these and different insights into how a glass-half-full mind-set can have an effect on our well being have begun to assist us distinguish various kinds of optimism. This, in flip, has allowed us to determine sorts which might be good for us, and…
