Optimism: The Will To Live Is Adaptive

Reviews the book, Optimism: The Biology of Hope by Lionel Tiger (1979). Tiger makes the bold assertion that optimism must be biologically adaptive. In six enticingly titled chapters, he builds a case for the necessity and evolution of optimism as a primary motivator in survival. Through topics as diverse as sex, family, and economics, the reader is provided woven threads of near infinite ways in which we anticipate a brighter future. Bordering on notions akin to group selection, but not quite (i.e., for the good of the species), issues of education, morality, and immortality, as they bear on the question of hope, are discussed with facility. Permeating the flow of the book is the idea that, to a greater extent than commonly believed, human behavior is fueled by biological adaptations; and attempts to segregate the former from the latter, except for purposes of emphasis, are futile. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)