#In between optimism and pessimism crack

In particular, the reduction in life satisfaction experienced by individuals who report being pessimistic is greater than that for well-understood negative events like unemployment. The thoughts that individuals have about the future contribute substantially to their current life satisfaction. Furthermore, including individuals’ optimism and pessimism about the future substantially increases the explanatory power of standard life satisfaction models. Optimism and pessimism aren’t just accidents this evidence suggests they are two different, but effective, strategies of coping with a complex and unpredictable world.This empirical investigation into life satisfaction, using nationally representative German panel data, finds a substantial association with an individual’s thoughts about the future, whether they are optimistic or pessimistic about it. So it’s different strokes for different folks. Again, part of why pessimists generate these sorts of negative thoughts is that it helps them perform better. They like to hear what the problems were, so they can correct them. Also, pessimists seem to respond better to negative feedback. On the other hand being pessimistic may help people reduce their natural anxiety and to perform better. Optimists also seem to respond better to positive feedback, and part of being optimistic may be generating this feedback for themselves, i.e. What’s emerging, from studies like this, is that both optimism and pessimism have important roles to play in people’s lives.īeing optimistic allows people to pursue their goals in a positive way: to dream a bigger and better dream, which they can work their way towards.

And the same went for the pessimists, who were most successful when thinking negative thoughts. It seems that when the optimists were using their preferred positive thinking strategy, they were more persistent.

#In between optimism and pessimism crack

It also turned out that people’s performance depended on how persistent they were at trying to crack the anagrams. At the same time optimists were more engaged with their task when they were thinking positive thoughts.

What the results showed was that pessimists performed better when thinking in negative ways. This meant that some people would be using their preferred strategy and others would be forced to think against the grain. The researchers also measured participants’ natural tendencies towards either optimism or pessimism. While doing the anagrams half were encouraged to think optimistic thoughts and half pessimistic thoughts. So, in their third study they had participants trying to solve anagrams.

This suggested a connection with motivation, but we need a true experiment for stronger evidence. By thinking about what might go wrong it helps protect us against when things do go wrong. For others a pessimistic mindset performs the same function. To cope with this unpredictability some of us choose to think optimistically because it helps motivate us to try, try again. It’s not that we’re doing anything wrong, just that life is unpredictable. Life is always throwing us curveballs and most of us accept that our plans often don’t work out. We all know how difficult it is to predict what’s going to happen in the future. How do people come to be polarized in this way? What’s my motivation?Ī clue comes from a new line of research into how both pessimists and optimists use their differing views of the world to motivate themselves. But we should be less concerned with which is ‘better’ or which camp is larger and more interested in why people see the world in such different ways in the first place.Īfter all, when an extreme optimist talks to an extreme pessimist, it’s like they come from two completely different worlds.