Optimism In Daily Life

Introduction In the daily life, people often describe others as being optimistic or less optimistic. Apparently, optimism is one of the important characteristics of both distinguishing and describing people. It would also impact one’s life in different aspects such as social communication and coping style. However, there is no unified definition of being optimistic. One consensus related with definitions of optimism is that optimism reflects an individual has the tendency to hold promising expectations for the future (Scheier & Carver, 1988). That is to say, optimistic people are more likely to expect the favorable outcomes would happen. This essay argues for being optimistic as a personality trait instead of an unstable mental state from

For instance, Shifren and Hooker (1995) measured the daily fluctuation of optimism of the caregivers of patients with Alzheimer’s disease through a daily questionnaire that they adjusted from the Life Orientation Test-Revised (Scheier, Carver, & Bridges, 1994). They found that the optimism and pessimism might be related with the perceived severity of the disease for the next day. However, this study did not point out whether the short-term variability of optimism occurred around a baseline or an average level. Shifren (1996) used the same methodology to measure the temporal liability of optimism among people with Parkinson and most of the participants did not demonstrate significant and pervasive changes in optimism, and a certain degree of the temporal variability might be related with mental state constructs, such as depression and anxiety. The negative affects might decrease the level optimism while the positive affects might increase the level optimism. To further investigate of impact of depression and anxiety on being optimism, Schou, Ekeberg, Sandivik and Ruland (2005) measured the optimism-pessimism level through Life Orientation Test-Revised (Scheier et al., 1994), and the changes of anxiety and depression through Hospital Anxiety and Depression scale (Zigmond & Snaith, 1983). It was found that the baseline level of

Some of them are able to hold optimistic expectations even under some unbeneficial environments, while some others are relatively less positive. Another observations is that it is hard to identify someone as being absolute optimistic. Most people we meet are between highly optimists and pessimists. Based on the result of previous research (Nes & Segerstrom, 2006), truly pessimists are of minority; most of people are living with optimism, but the level of optimism differs from person to person. Moreover, the individual difference among people exerts significant impact on people’s behavior