Possitive Thinking

Thesis Statement

“Optimism is the one quality more associated with success and happiness than any other”

Introduction

One enduring lesson from social and personality psychology is that beliefs affect social behavior. Beliefs can proactively shape the ways that individuals perceive and make sense of social situations, and beliefs can affect how individuals behave toward others. A belief orientation that has received a great deal of attention in a variety of domains is optimism . The focus of this entry is on how optimism is related to relationship processes and outcomes. This entry begins by defining optimism, reviewing some of the outcomes generally associated with it, and presenting a general theoretical model that explains why optimists enjoy more favorable outcomes in many areas of life. It then considers the role of optimismin relationships, discusses some of the positive relationship outcomes that have been associated with optimism, and highlights the adaptive relationship processes through which optimism brings about those outcomes.

Research has demonstrated that there are individual differences in globaloptimism—that is, some individuals are more inclined than are others to expect good things across a variety of life domains. A global, dispo-sitional tendency to be optimistic will typically manifest itself in a variety of more specific beliefs tied to particular times, situations, or life domains, and beyond any dispositional tendency, optimistic or pessimistic beliefs may be activated or diminished by short-term factors (for example, people in happy or angry moods are more optimistic than are people in fearful moods). Optimism and pessimism are generally conceptualized as opposite sides of a continuum. Thus, when this entry refers to optimists or pessimists, that is used as shorthand for relative differences along such a continuum, not for qualitatively different types of people.

Research on dispositional, global optimism helps paint a picture of the personality traits and outcomes typically associated with being an optimist. This research has shown that optimists tend to have somewhat higher levels of extraversion and self-esteem, and lower levels of neuroticism, stress, anxiety, and hopelessness. Optimism is associated with a number of favorable outcomes in various domains of physical health and psychological functioning. For example, optimism assessed before a stressful life transition has been shown to predict fewer physical symptoms in patients and better immune system functioning during the transition. Optimism is also correlated with lower depression, fewer mood disturbances, and fewer negative interpersonal interactions. Optimism has been shown to predict less negative affect, depression, and stress during major life transitions.

The term optimism and its ostensible cousin pessimism are relatively recent arrivals on the historical scene (Siçinski, 1972). In the 1700s, Leibniz 

Some writers - usually social philosophers - treat hope and optimism as features of general human nature to be praised or decried. In contrast, others - usually research-minded psychologists in the personality or clinical tradition - regard hope and optimism as characteristics that people possess to varying degrees. Three research streams define this latter approach. Each line of work has an associated self-report measure, has focused on the consequences of the individual difference as opposed to the antecedents, and has spawned a large literature demonstrating that hope and optimism (or at least the absence of their opposites) are associated with desirable outcomes like positive mood and good morale, perseverance, effective problem solving, ...