Optimism and Intelligence: Are Smart People More Optimistic?

Optimism and intelligence are almost unrelated: in two Scottish cohorts tested at age 11 and again in old age, IQ correlated close to zero with optimism (r between -.03 and .02), though higher IQ went with modestly lower pessimism (r of about -.3). Where intelligence makes a clearer difference is in realism, because people with higher cognitive ability are less prone to unrealistically rosy forecasts.

So the honest answer to "are smart people more optimistic?" is no, and the popular counter-claim that smart people are gloomy realists is only half right. This article explains how psychologists measure optimism, what the largest studies found, why the "intelligent pessimist" idea is so popular, and which confounds make the evidence hard to read.

Researchers use the word for two different things, and the distinction matters for the IQ question.

• Dispositional optimism: a stable, trait-like tendency to expect good things to happen. It is usually measured with the "Life Orientation Test-Revised" (LOT-R) of Scheier, Carver and Bridges (1994), which has six scored items, three worded optimistically ("In uncertain times I usually expect the best") and three pessimistically ("If something can go wrong for me, it will"), plus four filler items.

• Unrealistic optimism: a judgment error. Weinstein (1980) asked 258 college students to compare their chances of experiencing 42 life events with their classmates' chances, and on average they rated their own chances as above average for good events and below average for bad ones. Not everyone can be above average, so the group as a whole was biased.

A person can score high on the LOT-R and still forecast accurately, and someone with a gloomy temperament can still make optimistic errors about a specific outcome. Studies that link intelligence to "optimism" are often measuring one of these two things and not the other.

Optimism and pessimism also behave like partly separate traits. In the Lothian Birth Cohort data discussed below, a two-factor model fit the LOT-R much better than a single optimism-pessimism dimension, and the two factors correlated only -.31 and -.43 in the two samples.

The best evidence comes from Taylor, Ritchie and Deary (2017), who studied 847 members of the Lothian Birth Cohort 1936 (mean age about 73) and 220 members of the Lothian Birth Cohort 1921 (mean age about 87). All had taken the same intelligence test, the Moray House Test, at age 11 and again in old age.

• Optimism: neither childhood IQ nor older-age IQ correlated with optimism. The correlations ranged from -.03 to .02.

• Pessimism: age-11 IQ correlated -.31 (1936 cohort) and -.28 (1921 cohort) with pessimism measured about 62 to 76 years later. Older-age IQ correlated -.30 and -.25. A broader general-ability factor built from 14 tests correlated -.37 with pessimism in the 1936 cohort.

• Cognitive change: people whose IQ held up better from age 11 into old age were slightly less pessimistic (r = -.09 and -.12).

To put r = -.31 in IQ terms: across people one standard deviation apart in pessimism, the expected IQ difference is about 0.31 × 15, or roughly 5 points. That is a real association but a modest one, and it leaves about 90% of the variation in pessimism unexplained.

Other studies point the same way, with small effects. The Lothian authors note that only two earlier studies had looked at the question: one of 57 high school students aged 15 found higher intelligence went with greater optimism, and one of more than 7,000 older adults found higher cognitive ability went with lower pessimism but not with higher optimism. In the Northern Finland Birth Cohorts, Karhu and colleagues (2022) found that among 383 26-year-olds, higher optimism and lower pessimism were associated with better reasoning, and among 5,042 46-year-olds, higher pessimism was associated with lower memory scores, after adjusting for sex, education, mother's education and depression.

The question changes when the outcome is the accuracy of a prediction. Dawson (2023) used a large, nationally representative UK household survey (N = 36,312, mean age about 51) in which people said each year whether they expected to be better off, worse off or about the same financially in a year's time. He compared those expectations with what actually happened to their household income over roughly a decade of annual surveys, and related the errors to a general cognitive-ability score built from memory, verbal fluency, fluid reasoning and numerical reasoning tests.

• Fewer rosy errors: after controls for demographics, socioeconomic status and education, people 2 standard deviations above average in cognitive ability were 34.8% less likely to make an extremely optimistic forecast than people 2 standard deviations below average (6.2% versus 9.5% of forecasts).

• More realism: the same high scorers were 22% more likely to forecast correctly.

• More pessimistic errors too: they were 53.2% more likely to make an extremely pessimistic forecast, from a low base.

So higher ability predicted fewer optimistic mistakes and more accurate forecasts, along with somewhat more mistakes in the cautious direction. Adding education to the model shrank the effect sizes, and even high scorers still made plenty of errors.

A later study by the same author used a different outcome and a stronger design. Dawson (2025) analyzed English adults aged over 50 who estimated their own chances of survival, and found that high-IQ respondents made substantially smaller forecasting errors. The result held when genetic variants linked to IQ were used as an instrument (a method called "Mendelian randomization", which uses the random inheritance of genes to reduce confounding).

The belief has some support, but it usually overreaches.

The first source is a quick reading of studies like Dawson's. High scorers did make more pessimistic forecasting errors, but only in one domain, and the more common outcome was an accurate forecast. None of it shows that bright people have a darker temperament.

The second source is "depressive realism", the idea that depressed people see the world more accurately. A meta-analysis by Moore and Fresco (2012) of 75 studies and 7,305 participants found only a small overall effect (d = -.07), and both depressed and non-depressed people showed a positive bias. If you want to know how mood itself relates to IQ, our article on the link between IQ score and depression covers that evidence separately.

The third is a confusion between calibration and character. Seeing your own prospects accurately is a cognitive skill, closer to the self-knowledge discussed in our article on humility and intelligence than to mood.

Several things make these correlations hard to interpret.

• Personality is the bigger player: in the Lothian cohorts, emotional stability correlated .49 and .47 with optimism, far more than IQ did, and anxiety and depression were also clearly linked. The IQ-pessimism association did survive adjustment for personality and mood.

• Social class and health: in the 1936 cohort, lower occupational social class correlated .26 with pessimism, and number of illnesses .14. The IQ-pessimism link persisted after adjusting for both, which suggests that the life advantages that go with higher IQ do not fully explain it.

• Education: in Dawson's UK data, controlling for education significantly reduced the cognitive-ability effects, so part of the association runs through schooling.

• Reverse direction: optimism may also protect cognition. In the US Health and Retirement Study, Gawronski and colleagues (2016) followed 4,624 adults aged 65 and over for four years and found that each standard-deviation increase in optimism went with lower odds of developing cognitive impairment (odds ratio 0.70 after sociodemographic adjustment). That study measured decline into impairment rather than IQ, and it is observational.

The Lothian findings are also limited by attrition, since participants who dropped out had lower childhood IQ and more depressive symptoms, and by modest reliability for the three-item optimism scale.

Not measurably. In the largest lifespan study, IQ at age 11 and in old age correlated close to zero with optimism, while correlating about -.3 with pessimism.

No, on average they are slightly less pessimistic in temperament. In one large UK study they did make more cautious financial forecasting errors, but their main advantage was being realistic more often.

No. Dispositional optimism is essentially unrelated to IQ. Lower cognitive ability does predict more unrealistically optimistic forecasts, which is a different thing from a hopeful outlook.

It is the tendency to rate your own chances of good outcomes as higher, and of bad outcomes as lower, than those of other people. It is measured by comparing expectations with base rates or with what actually happens.

Possibly. In one US cohort of older adults, more optimistic people were less likely to develop cognitive impairment over four years, but the study was observational and needs replication.

Intelligence does not make people more optimistic, and it makes them only slightly less pessimistic in temperament. Its clearest link is with calibration: higher-ability people make fewer unrealistically rosy forecasts and get their predictions right more often, though no one is free of bias. Outlook depends far more on personality and mood than on IQ. If you want an accurate reading of your own reasoning ability, without relying on how optimistic you feel about it, you can take a full-length online IQ test.

1. Taylor, A. M., Ritchie, S. J., & Deary, I. J. (2017). Associations of intelligence across the life course with optimism and pessimism in older age. Intelligence, 62, 79-88. [doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2017.03.002](. doi.org

2. Scheier, M. F., Carver, C. S., & Bridges, M. W. (1994). Distinguishing optimism from neuroticism (and trait anxiety, self-mastery, and self-esteem): A reevaluation of the Life Orientation Test. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67(6), 1063-1078. [doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.67.6.1063](. doi.org

3. Weinstein, N. D. (1980). Unrealistic optimism about future life events. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39(5), 806-820. [doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.39.5.806](. doi.org

4. Dawson, C. (2023). Looking on the (b)right side of life: Cognitive ability and miscalibrated financial expectations. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 51(9), 1703-1715. [doi.org/10.1177/01461672231209400](. doi.org

5. Dawson, C. (2025). IQ, genes, and miscalibrated expectations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 129(6), 1185-1201. [doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000567](. doi.org

6. Karhu, J., Hintsanen, M., Ek, E., Koskela, J., & Veijola, J. (2022). Dispositional optimism and pessimism in association with cognitive abilities in early and middle adulthood. Personality and Individual Differences, 196, 111710. [doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2022.111710](. doi.org

7. Moore, M. T., & Fresco, D. M. (2012). Depressive realism: A meta-analytic review. Clinical Psychology Review, 32(6), 496-509. [doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2012.05.004](. doi.org

8. Gawronski, K. A. B., Kim, E. S., Langa, K. M., & Kubzansky, L. D. (2016). Dispositional optimism and incidence of cognitive impairment in older adults. Psychosomatic Medicine, 78(7), 819-828. [doi.org/10.1097/PSY.0000000000000345](. doi.org

Hero image: Is the Glass Half Full or Half Empty?, by Gabecollett, CC BY-SA 4.0. Via Wikimedia Commons.