Keywords
positive and negative affect
physical and mental health
How to Cite
Abstract
Psychological variables and especially the positive variables have shown multiple benefits for humans. Important evidence indicates that subjects with better well-being higher levels of happiness and positive emotions show better health indicators. Optimism is a positive variable widely studied and strong evidence of its benefits on the health of individuals. However, an explanatory model about how these benefits occur has been less studied. It has been proposed to evaluate a model that establishes optimism can be a causal variable health mediated the positive and negative affects. An analysis of structural equation modeling was conducted to test an explanatory model. Participants 995 people aged between 18 and 60 years old. Dispositional optimism, positive and negative affect as well as mental and physical health was assessed. Structural model analysis was conducted to test an explanatory model. The results show that the model is suitable adjustment to consider allowing optimism as an explanatory variable of both physical and mental health mediated by positive and negative affect.This journal is registered under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License. Thus, this work may be reproduced, distributed, and publicly shared in digital format, as long as the names of the authors and Pontificia Universidad Javeriana are acknowledged. Others are allowed to quote, adapt, transform, auto-archive, republish, and create based on this material, for any purpose (even commercial ones), provided the authorship is duly acknowledged, a link to the original work is provided, and it is specified if changes have been made. Pontificia Universidad Javeriana does not hold the rights of published works and the authors are solely responsible for the contents of their works; they keep the moral, intellectual, privacy, and publicity rights. Approving the intervention of the work (review, copy-editing, translation, layout) and the following outreach, are granted through an use license and not through an assignment of rights. This means the journal and Pontificia Universidad Javeriana cannot be held responsible for any ethical malpractice by the authors. As a consequence of the protection granted by the use license, the journal is not required to publish recantations or modify information already published, unless the errata stems from the editorial management process. Publishing contents in this journal does not generate royalties for contributors.