MOCK ESSAY QUESTIONS
1 Discuss the strengths and limitations of Snyder’s cognitive formulation of hope.
2 Is seeing a glass as half full always beneficial?
3 Compare and contrast the theories of dispositional optimism and explanatory style.
History of optimism
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ptimism has been described as a ‘Velcro construct’ (Peterson, 2006:119) as it has many correlates including happiness, health and achievement (Carver and Scheier, 2009). But what exactly is optimism and is it always good to ‘look on the bright side of life?’In the early days of philosophy and psychology, optimism was thought of as naivety or a superficial denial of suffering. Health practitioners regarded positive mental health as the absence of naïve optimistic illusions (optimism). Based in part on this logic, mental health experts, from the 1930s to the 1960s, often defined mental health as intact ‘reality testing’ such that the person holds only modest expectations about the future and has a more accurate or balanced view of the world (as reviewed in Peterson, 2000). However, since then, researchers have found mounting evidence to suggest that optimism isn’t just a form of denial but a necessary component for resilient and happy individuals.
Of course, in psychology nothing is ever straightforward, thus within positive psychology there are two main schools of thought surrounding the definition and conceptualization of optimism: dispositional optimism and explanatory style.
Dispositional optimism (Scheier and Carver, 1987) is defined as a personality trait1 relating to generalized outcome expectancies. Thus optimists are characterized by their broad expectancy that outcomes are likely to be positive whereas pessimists are characterized by the future anticipation of negative outcomes.
Leading researchers Scheier and Carver (2009) posit that optimism is tied into their self-regulatory model, which states that all human activity is based on goals. In order to reach our goals, we need to regulate our actions and behaviours. When experiencing hardship while trying to reach these goals, people who are optimists will continue and push through in order to reach their goal, whereas pessimistic people will be more likely to give up (Carver and Scheier, 1998).
The two main elements of dispositional optimism are the concepts of expectancy and confidence. Expectancy is the most crucial element as it has a direct link with expectancy value theories of motivation, which posit that all behaviour is a result of the desire to obtain a person’s values or goals. Thus, in order to achieve the goal, it must have value and spark motivation to continue (Scheier and Carver, 2009).
Confidence, the second element, is highly influential on optimism. If confidence is high that the goal can be achieved, then the person is more likely to act. If there is doubt, then the person will disengage. Scheier and Carver (2009: 657) define optimism and pessimism as ‘simply broader versions of confidence or doubt, operating to most situations in life rather than one or two.’
Psychologists measure dispositional optimism via the LOT-R, a short ten-item questionnaire that focuses on differentiating optimists from pessimists (Scheier, Carver and Bridges, 1994). We have included this measurement tool at the end of this chapter, so have a go and see what type of ‘ist’ you are!
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o you know anyone who is an ‘eternal optimist’ or a ‘thundering pessimist’? Have they always been this way? Are you this way? Do you think you can learn to become more optimistic?Think about it…
On the other hand, attribution style (explanatory style) (Seligman, 1998) refers to the way in which one explains the causes and influences of previous positive and negative events in order to create expectancies about the future. Research has shown that attributions for negative events are more important than those for positive events.
Pessimists explain negative events by inferring internal, stable or global causes: The event was caused by myself (internal), by something that is chronic (stable), or by something that is pervasive and will affect other situations as well (global). Optimists explain negative events by inferring external, unstable or local causes: The event was caused by something/someone other than myself (external), by something that will probably not persist (unstable) or by something that is probably limited to this specific circumstance (local). Optimists adopt unstable, external (leaving one’s self-esteem intact) and specific (depending on circumstances) explanations for bad events.
Currently, literature has shown that the ‘internal/external’ component to explanatory style is not as important as stability and globality.
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esearchers in the US were interested in whether or not the optimistic content of a presidential candidate’s speech could influence/affect the voting results. Peterson and his colleagues looked at speeches from 1900 to 1984 and found that individuals who used more optimistic wording (and less focus on the negative) won 85 per cent of the US presidential elections.See Zullow et al. (1988) for the original article.
PRESIDENTS
History of optimism 97
Psychologists measure attribution styles via the Attributional Style Questionnaire (ASQ), which presents vignettes (scenarios) to people, and they have to choose which of several explanations for the event seems most likely (some explanations being more internal, global, stable and so forth).
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he Pollyanna principle, the name of which was taken from the protagonist in the classic novel Pollyanna (Porter, 1913), supposes that the subconscious human brain is wired to have a positivity bias towards situations and other people. How do we know this? Numerous studies have shown that the Pollyanna principle is more pervasive than we would believe. For example, people overestimate their interaction with positive more than they do with negative stimuli. Can you think of a time when this happened to you?Think about it…
The main difference between the two schools of thought is that attributional style, based on Seligman’s early work with learned helplessness as a model of depression (Abramson et al., 1978), recognizes optimism as a learned skill and not a stable personality trait. Seligman recommends monitoring your automatic thoughts and attitudes and disputing pessimistic explanations, which is similar to techniques used in cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT). The key to learned optimism is reframing. In order to achieve this, you must learn how to identify your beliefs about certain situations and recognize how these beliefs can have a detrimental effect on your emotions and subsequent behaviours.2
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ptimistic attributional style has been associated with sales success.Researchers assessed an independent insurance company’s sales persons on their optimistic explanatory style. Those sales persons who were in the top 10 per cent of scorers for optimistic explanatory styles sold 88 per cent more insurance than the bottom 10 per cent of scorers.
See Seligman and Schulman (1986) for the original article.
SELL, SELL, SELL
However, dispositional researchers have argued whether or not attribution style really is optimism. Attributional style is concerned with the question of why good and bad events happened whereas dispositional optimism focuses on what will probably happen in the future. Despite this difference, Peterson (2006) reports that the measurement tools for both schools of thought have similar correlates and have some levels of convergence.
time out
Learning optimism . . . learning your ABC’s
The first step in learning your ABC’s is to negotiate the acronym:
A dversity B elief
C onsequence
Adversity: the straight, non-judgemental facts of the situation. For example: Who, what, when, where.
Belief: your immediate patterned belief (why it happened; what will happen next).
Consequence: your feelings and behaviours related to these beliefs.
Ultimately, when we identify our beliefs and recognize their effects on emotions and behaviours (beliefs cause consequences) we can challenge and change them to more productive thought patterns.
(Seligman, 1998)