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Northwestern Mutual’s Optimism Barometer – a tool, which measures the attitudes of those who visit the site and weigh in on how they are feeling about, well… life. One of the statements, for example, says “What a person has is less important than who a person is.” And, to this, you can agree or disagree on a scale of 1 – 5.

The barometer seems to indicate an upward trend in positive outlooks of American citizens, despite – shall we say it together? – the economic difficulties we’ve been experiencing as of late.

The most notable data revealed a 60% year-over-year jump in those who scored highest on the scale of optimism. This was shown by comparing the data of the first quarter of last year (2009), when just 25% of those who answered the questionnaire scored between 8 and 10 (10 being the highest score possible) and the data of this year’s first quarter; today, nearly 40% scored this high on the optimism scale.

Greg Oberland, the executive vice president at Northwestern Mutual says, “These results suggest that Americans are, in increasing numbers, accepting the reality of the ‘New Normal’ while also being able to see beyond the immediate challenges of the current economic cycle and remain optimistic about their long-term prospects. We find it encouraging that Americans appear to be widening their time horizons and bringing a long-term approach to how they pursue their goals. It’s something at the very core of what we believe in, and aim to deliver through our process; and it’s a strategy that also has broad applications beyond finances in people’s lives.”

The optimism questionnaire is very easy and takes just a couple minutes. You can see (and answer) for yourself here. The way in which optimists and pessimists answer the questions that were taken from The American Reality Study, commissioned in 2009 by Northwestern Mutual in an attempt to show how Americans are facing the social, economic, and political changes in the U.S. are actually quite distinctive.

It seems that maybe we are collectively seeing the light at the end of the tunnel and believe that light to be a relatively bright one, I’d say.