572).Īccording to Rick Snyder’s Hope Theory, hope is a process of goal-directed thought that reflects both the belief that one can find pathways to the goal and has motivation based on one’s perceived capabilities, or agency thinking. Hope and optimism are both part of our cognitive, emotional, and motivational stances toward the future, indicating a belief that future good events will outweigh bad events (Peterson & Seligman, 2004, p. Optimism as a trait is also studied in positive psychology, and appears as the VIA Strength of Hope and Optimism. Tali Sharot, associate professor of psychology at UCL, has popularised the idea of an innate optimism bias built into the human brain. Additionally, Sandra Schneider defines realistic optimism as the tendency to select positive interpretations whenever one has interpretational latitude.įurthermore, “optimism” is used not only to describe an explanatory style, but especially colloquially it is used to describe the “half-full” glass person, who – it is often implied – was born this way. It is a peculiar empirical phenomenon that while people tend to be optimistic about their own future, they can at the same time be deeply pessimistic about the future of their nation or the world. Seligman found that an optimistic explanatory style is not an inherent trait, but rather a trainable skill (hence the name of Seligman’s book “Learned Optimism”). Seligman found that often the difference between people who give up in the face of adversity and people who persevere is how people explain bad events and good events.
Martin Seligman’s twenty years of research on optimism started when he found that an optimistic explanatory style worked against helplessness.
0 kommentar(er)
