WHAT ATTITUDE IS THE best one for survival? Researchers in Britain tried to find out. The researchers divided breast cancer patients into four groups when they were first diagnosed. They were divided based on the four different ways the women responded to their diagnosis:

1. Some gave up, felt defeated, and powerless do anything about it. They resigned themselves to death.

2. Some accepted the diagnosis stoically and did nothing to find out if they could do anything about it.

3. Some reacted with denial. They denied that the diagnosis was serious. For example, some of them who had mastectomies said their breasts were removed only, "as a precaution."

4. And some decided they would triumph. They would fight the disease and win. They learned everything they could about it so they could conquer it.

Five years later, 88 percent of the women who had died were from the first two groups.