Optimism (psychology)

Optimism refers to a way of approaching life, a dimension of a person’s outlook, a way to consider and contextualize events within a person’s experience, or, more generally, to read and evaluate events that occur within their larger environment. Optimists generally see the potential for a movement toward the positive, through a faith that is generated by the person’s confidence in their own abilities and often sustained by a spiritual investment in an energy that far exceeds the scope of the events themselves. Optimists believe that bad or negative events are rare incidents and that it is not their fault when something bad happens but is rather due to something external. Optimists rely on that positivity as a strategy for working through events that could easily frustrate that positive outlook. Psychologists have long documented that despite being unable to pinpoint the source of such positivity, a person’s individual energy clearly impacts their ability to solve problems, maintain composure during periods of crisis, contextualize tragedies, and recover from misfortune. Optimists display attention to positive information and manifest active engagement, positive reframing, and problem-solving behaviors. Optimism is universal and is considered an important psychological phenomenon that can help individuals identify and apply ways to protect and increase their well-being.

Background

Numerous studies indicate an association between optimism and enhanced coping strategies, lower levels of distress and depression, lower risk of mortality, slower disease progression, and better psychological adjustment to a diagnosis and treatment of a severe disorder. Furthermore, it is also argued that a high degree of optimism results in greater control over thoughts, feelings and actions, health behaviors, and emotional well-being that in turn affects one’s ability to be self-reflective, which is essential for producing enduring cognitive-emotional change. Although cynics are quick to point out that such faith in the power of the positive often indicates a deliberate and willful turning away from the evidence, psychologists stress that optimists are not ignoring reality but instead able to rework the interpretation of events until the interpretation generates confidence and an ability to cope.

Because state of mind can have such impact on mental and physical health as well as happiness and overall life-satisfaction, levels of optimism has received attention from a public health perspective in order to develop positivity as a way to enhance healthy living. It has also been proposed that positive and negative experiences throughout childhood and adolescence influence an individual’s level of optimism.

Although questions remain regarding the source of optimism, psychologists suspect that it comes as much from mental energy as it does from emotional health. Optimists tend to be self-motivating, articulate, educated, engaged in daily activities, and comfortable when communicating with others. Optimists tend to lack strong egos and believe that effort is reward enough and are often humble in the face of adversity. In turn, optimists tend to have a greater appreciation of the ordinary, and there is little correlation between economic class and degree of optimism. However, more and more studies find that genetic factors may play a significant role in the degree of optimism a person possesses.

Substantive research has focused on the changing characteristics of optimism according to time, situation, life conditions, and culture. The benefits and deficits of optimism are often discussed by researchers in terms of dispositional optimism, comparative optimism, unrealistic optimism, defensive pessimism or unrealistic pessimism.

Overview

Although sunny and bright personalities are often considered unidimensional and sometimes cartoonish, psychologists are quick to point out that optimism comes in different variations and categories. Dispositional optimism, for instance, represents a person’s acceptance that both good and bad events will occur in life, but that every negative event has an even greater positive aspect to it. If a severe storm is forecasted, for instance, the dispositional optimist will not first perceive it as dangerous or inconvenient but rather as an opportunity for beneficial rain. A potentially negative event is more likely to be framed within a more aggressively positive perception, and dire circumstances can be greeted with buoyant energy. Dispositional optimism is resilient and can be traced across decades of an individual’s life. It is often referred to as "big optimism."

Strategic optimists, by contrast, do not just ignore the unpleasant or the negative. Instead, they perceive such events within a broader, rationalized context and essentially "make peace" with the event. For example, the approaching storm would be perceived by a strategic optimist as an event that is out of anyone’s control, as something that will eventually end and with negative effects that can be guarded against. Strategic optimism is a way of assessing events and framing them against their potential longevity and their degree of impact.

Comparative optimists, on the other hand, view life from a more egocentric framework and look for a range of context in other people. Comparative optimists believe that good things happen to them with more regularity than they do to other people, so any setback is an anomaly and imminently survivable.

Unrealistic optimists believe that the future offers many opportunities and very few unpleasant events. They are therefore more likely to experience good things and less likely to have to suffer through bad things. Negative events are teachable moments to emerge from better equipped, better informed, and more aware. Unrealistic optimists are often perceived as deliberately distorting evidence in order to protect their ego; others view them as people who place great weight on moving forward regardless of the experience.

Optimists and pessimists were once regarded as having opposite personalities. Since the 1990s, however, it has been suggested that they can be complimentary. Main types of pessimism are defensive in nature and are a result of a specific period in the individual’s life or a specific life occurrence that caused the individual to chronically perceive events with low expectations in order to manage anxiety. Unrealistic pessimism, for instance, is the tendency to consider oneself more susceptible to negative events than an average person. If one expects the worst in life or from an experience, then one will never be disappointed or hurt.

Like optimists, pessimists generally have a broad outlook on events and contextualize them with selective evidence. The difference, however, is that the pessimist will also perceive little chance for significant improvement. Pessimists tend to have a more vulnerable quality about them and are more prone to passive acceptance. Psychologists, of course, have found that pure optimism, like pure pessimism, is rare. Most individuals live each day navigating through positive and negative emotional extremes and working to find a middle ground from which to perceive life and thereby develop a working strategy for coping.

Bibliography

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Brandt, Phyllis R. Psychology of Optimism. New York: Nova Science, 2011. Print.

Carver, Charles S., and Michael F. Scheier. "Dispositional Optimism." Trends in Cognitive Sciences 18.6 (2014): 293–99. Print.

Charyton, C., et al. "Creativity as an Attribute of Positive Psychology: The Impact of Positive and Negative Affect on the Creative Personality." Jour. of Creativity in Mental Health 4.1 (2009): 57–66. Print.

Gallagher, Matthew W., Shane J. Lopez, and Sarah D. Pressman. "Optimism Is Universal: Exploring the Presence and Benefits of Optimism in a Representative Sample of the World." Jour. of Personality 81.5 (2013): 429–40. Print.

Gherasim, Loredana, Cornelia Măirean, and Andrei Rusu. "Dispositional Optimism and Judgments of Future Life Events: Affective States as Moderators." Jour. of Happiness Studies 17.3 (2016): 1015–31. Print.

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Shepperd, James A., et al. " Taking Stock of Unrealistic Optimism." Perspectives on Psychological Science 8.4 (2013): 395–411. Print.