People who are cheerful and relaxed are less likely to suffer from colds. It's possible that being full of vim and vigor helps the body fight illnesses, say the researchers from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh. "We need to take more seriously the possibility that a positive emotional style is a major player in disease risk," says psychologist Sheldon Cohen, the study's lead researcher. In a previous study, Cohen and his colleagues found that people who tended to be cheerful and lively were least likely to develop sniffles, coughs, and other cold symptoms . Those findings were interesting, but they didn't prove that a person's attitude affects whether he or she gets sick. Instead, it was still probable that a person's underlying personality is what matters. Evidence suggests, for instance, that certain people are naturally more likely to be outgoing and optimistic, with high self-respect and a sense of control over life. This would mean that who we are, not how we feel, finally decides our chances of catching colds. To figure out which mattered more (personality or emotions), the CMU team interviewed 193 healthy adults. The researchers talked to each person over the phone every evening for 2 weeks. They told the researchers about the positive and negative feelings they had experienced that day. The results showed that everyone in the study was equally likely to get infected. Their symptoms, however, differed depending on the types of emotions that they had reported over the previous 2 weeks. Among those who reported good moods and had been infected with the flu virus, for example, 28 percent developed coughs and stuffy noses. On the other hand, those symptoms struck 41 percent of people who had been less positive. Scientists argue about whether negative emotions or positive emotions have a stronger effect on how healthy we are. For now, it can't hurt to look on the bright side more often than not! What is the text mainly about?
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