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Warm People Likely to Keep Cold at Bay1 Staying positive2 through the cold season could be your best defense against getting iii, new study findings suggest. is an experiment that exposed healthy volunteers to a cold or fluvirus3, researchers found that people with a generally sunny disposition4 were less likely to fall ill. The findings, published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine, build on evidence that a positive emotional style 5 can help ward off the common cold and other illnesses. Researchers believe the reasons may be both objective as in happiness boosting immune function and subjective as in happy people being less troubled by a scratchy throat6 or runny nose. People with a positive emotional style may have different immune responses to the virus,explained lead study author Dr Sheldon Cohen of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. And when they do get a cold, they may interpret their illness as being less severe. Cohen and his colleagues had found in a previous study that happier people seemed less susceptible to7 catching a cold, but some questions remained as to8 whether the emotional trait itself had the effect. For the new study, the researchers had 193 healthy adults complete standard measures of personality traits, self-perceived health and emotional style. Those who tended to be happy, energetic and easy going were judged as having a positive emotional style, while those who were often unhappy, tense and hostile had a negative style. | 
