Chuck Bryan

Yeah, for sure.

There was a study this year, actually, pretty robust, where they had 200,000 adults.

And this one's good because it was spread out over 22 different countries.

And we'll talk about a little bit of the bias of just studying sort of Western countries with optimism and stuff.

But they compare their levels of optimism

with how they remember their childhood.

And across all the geographies, and again, no surprise, people who had positive relationships in their family with their parents and siblings, they had better financial status, better health outcomes, and obviously were more optimistic.

Interestingly, if you had frequent religious attendance when you were a kid, they associate that with optimism, but most strongly in more secular countries, which I thought was pretty fascinating.

Yeah, I was trying to figure that out.

And the best I could come up with is that they just stood out more because they were fewer and farther between.

I'm not sure.

I don't know.

Or maybe in more religious countries, you're just sort of more expected to be dragged to church.

And it wasn't like a conscious choice you made to go.

I don't know.

That's a better interpretation.

Okay.

And also, like I was saying, divorce, abuse, feeling like an outsider in your family, all associated with lower optimism.

Yeah.

And they did say like, OK, there is possibly something we should mention here.