Abstract
Optimistical attitude toward life and psycho-physical wellbeing.
During the last twenty years, the research in psychology
has developed a growing interest for the themes
of happiness and individual well-being, focusing above
all on their influence on people’s physical and psychological
health. The several works about this topic
have cleary emphasized that optimism acts as a protective
factor toward stressant situations and toward many
pathological and psychopathological manifestations
(Tylor and Aspinwall, 1996; Fredrickson, 2004; Steele
and Wade, 2004). Neverthless, near these data, other reapprise
considerably the benefical effects of optimism on
health and suggest that a specific form of optimismthe
unrealistic optimism- can even rappresent a subjective
risk factor, inducing people to underestimate environmental
risks and to behave in a dangerous way (Weinstein,
1980). The main purpose of this work is to
analyse all these aspect of optimism, discussing the
main theoretical frameworks and researches available in
literature.