ArticleSocial science & medicine (1982)2021
Dispositional Optimism and Disaster Resilience: A natural experiment from the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami.
Article in Social science & medicine (1982), 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed, 16 citations in OpenAlex.
- Psychosocial trajectories in Germany across a decade of societal crises.The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences · 2026Article
- The Impact of earthquake trauma and experience on positive future expectations in Türkiye: mediating roles of resilience and religious attitude.BMC psychology · 2026Article
- "Come What May": An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis of Disaster Survivors' Resilience and Meaning-making of Fatalism.BMC psychology · 2025Article
- Strength-based parenting improves depression outcomes and promotes posttraumatic growth in earthquake survivors: a longitudinal study.BMC psychology · 2025Article
- Coping with Coronavirus Pandemic: Risk Perception Predicts Life Optimism.Journal of happiness studies · 2023Article
- Lessons learned from psychosocial support and mental health surveys during the 10 years since the Great East Japan Earthquake: Establishing evidence-based disaster psychiatry.Psychiatry and clinical neurosciences · 2022Review
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 5 institutions in 2 countries.
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Abstract
objectiveDispositional optimism - the general belief that good things will happen - is considered a key asset for the preservation of mental health after a traumatic life event. However, it has been hypothesized that in extreme situations such as major disasters where positive expectations cannot overcome the grim reality on the ground, being optimistic might be a disadvantage. To test this mismatch hypothesis, this study explores whether higher pre-disaster dispositional optimism is associated with higher posttraumatic stress (PTS) and depressive symptoms among individuals who experienced the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami.
methodsInformation on optimism was collected from community-dwelling residents aged ≥65 years seven months before the 2011 Earthquake/Tsunami in Iwanuma, a Japanese city located 80-km from the epicenter. Data on disaster-related personal experiences (e.g., loss of relatives or friends/housing damage), as well as depressive and PTS symptoms, were collected during a follow-up survey in 2013, 2.5 years after the earthquake and tsunami. Multiple logistic regression models were utilized to evaluate the associations between disaster experiences, optimism, and depressive/PTS symptoms among 962 participants.
resultsHigher pre-disaster dispositional optimism was associated with lower odds of developing depressive symptoms (OR = 0.78, 95% CI: 0.65 to 0.95) and PTS symptoms (OR = 0.83, 95% CI: 0.69 to 0.99) after the earthquake. Contrary to the mismatch hypothesis, high dispositional optimism buffered the adverse impact of housing damage on depressive symptoms (interaction term coefficient = -0.63, p = 0.0431), but not on PTS symptoms.
conclusionsIn contrast to the mismatch hypothesis, the results suggest that dispositional optimism is a resilience resource among survivors of a disaster.
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