We all have experienced episodes of feeling dissatisfied at least at some point during our lives, during which things did not go the way we wished. We might have achieved A’s easily in high school; upon entering college, we then might have found ourselves trapped by disappointing grades. Also, some of us might have suffered social stresses, such as worrying about the break-up of a romance and struggling to adapt to a new environment, as well as trying to overcome the feeling of loneliness. Some of us might have financial problems. All these kinds of situations can lead to pessimistic thinking. Pessimism is thus closely associated with our everyday lives. Some of us live with it a longer time, while some of us experience it only for a short duration. The word “pessimism” by itself as defined in the dictionary does not immediately carry any concrete meaning and does not directly impact us. It is indeed the concrete experience of pessimism as well as its correlated impacts and consequences that can possibly mean permanent changes and so deeply affect our lives.
It is important to for us to acknowledge the advantage and the disadvantage of the experience of pessimism, as well as to have a deep understanding of both, since pessimistic thinking is something we may encounter everyday. As defined in Oxford English Dictionary, pessimism is “the tendency or disposition to look at the worst aspect of things.” We might think of failing or dropping the class when we keep making bad grades. We might also think of dropping out of college when we find ourselves not being able to get along with other students. These correlated events can happen if we interpret and so experience the effect of pessimism in our lives in a negative and depressed way. However, there is another way, which is to think of the possibility of experiencing a positive aspect of pessimism. When difficulties come into our lives, rather than being depressed and let the difficulties beat us down, we can try to find a way to first acknowledge and then to overcome them instead. It is generally considered that a failure occurs when we surrender ourselves to difficulties, and a success is taking place when we face and overcome these difficulties. It is also reasonable to believe that facing difficult tasks can challenge, enhance and reinforce our ability to deal with new difficulties in the future. This view of pessimism has been supported by research, like the findings of Goodhart who concluded: “experience of coping with such a difficulty may increase confidence in one’s ability to deal effectively with future adversity” (117).
When we are in trouble, we face two choices: either to run away and take a different path or goal, or to face the difficulty and overcome it. When we choose to run away and restart something new, we might keep an optimistic belief in our hearts, in which we believe that everything will later turn the way we want. However, life is not ideal most of the time, so we might end with another bigger failure that destroys our hope completely. If we choose the other way of thinking, that is, a pessimistic thinking which fully acknowledges the difficulties and the potential negative outcome, it is possible that we might feel sad about the possible bad outcome, but at the same time, a positive and enhancing working attitude may be built. Therefore, a failure that is confronted by pessimistic thinking may not be as deadly in the final outcome as one confronted by optimistic thinking. It is actually helpful and beneficial to have full access to pessimistic thinking, if we look at it in terms of long-term effects. Being open to a pessimistic assessment of a situation, rather than following optimistic wishes and thoughts, helps us to face and acknowledge various difficulties when they present; it forces us to confront them, and will allow us to think deeply about problems and tasks so as to build us a better working and life attitude, which eventually leads us to a successful future.
Optimism is useful as a comparison when we want to explore the relationship between these two in a deeper sense. Optimism is defined as “hopefulness and confidence about the future or the successful outcome of something” in the Oxford English Dictionary. It is generally considered as a positive way of thinking, because it allows us to keep hope when facing difficulties, while giving us enough confidence about the possible positive outcomes. In this sense, hope and confidence are combined with high expectancy of outcomes. Oettingen presents this idea by saying that “High expectations of success lead to strong performance, and strong performance leads to high expectations of success” (1200). However, optimism is not always encouraging. To be more precise, it is only an encouraging thoughtful exploration under certain conditions. A study was done by Brickman and his coworkers in 1976, which suggests that “positive thinking leads to better performance than negative thinking only when these thoughts are directly relevant to the stress-producing task that subjects are asked to perform. When the activity to which these thoughts pertain is less relevant to the task, the effects of this thinking may be diametrically opposite” (quoted in Goodhart 119). Moreover, DeGrandpre later supported this idea by presenting that only under conditions that are embedded within the “measureable phenomena situated in the physical and social world” (733), optimism can enhance our chances to be successful.
Furthermore, evidence shows that children rarely keep optimistic beliefs in their hearts when thinking about their future. “Although there is a relatively large literature regarding children’s short-term expectancies for success and failure in specific achievement-related tasks, studies of children’s predictions about their distant personal future, where there is much less objective basis for their predictions (e.g., ‘in the future I will be very successful in working out my personal life’), are virtually nonexistent” (Fischer 242). Further, optimism can cause us to have unrealistic, high expectations by allowing us to overestimate ourselves. This is shown by Schneider:
Although optimism is often characterized as a positive outlook with respect to the future, the concept can be extended to experiences in the past by acknowledging the fuzzy boundaries on interpreting events. When we evaluate past performances or events that we have experienced, we can take advantage of the latitude in potential reasonable interpretations to select an interpretation that focuses on the positive aspects of the situation (256).
As we can see, not only does optimism not play a necessary role in our future successes, but it is also not by itself leading to thoughtful encouragement and might even have a negative impact, such as allowing us to have unrealistically high expectations. At the same, a negative way of thinking that is triggered by a pessimistic outlook might open the door to a realistic assessment of the problem at hand.
Pessimistic thinking causes realistic assessments, and that is something good to have. Indeed, we are supposed to look at the worst possible outcome when our minds are stimulated by negative thoughts. Goodhart presents his idea in which pessimistic thinking allows us to avoid deadly failure and thus has an enhancing impact:
The effects of negative thinking (explaining failure) on task appear to depend on whether or not subjects are explicitly required to predict how well they will do on the task before they engage in it…In the absence of this external commitment, however, activating thoughts about the possibility of failing may actually motivate subjects to try harder to avoid the negative outcome they have been thinking about, and therefore it may have a positive influence on their performance (119).
In this manner, having negative thoughts helps us to be successful by building within us a challenging working-attitude as well as hatching an “I can do” mind-set. Goodhart’s research confirmed the study of Brickman and his coworkers by stating that “subjects who activated negative thoughts about a previous stress-producing event were often stimulated to try harder in order to avoid a negative outcome on the achievement task, and this led them to perform even better than subjects who had thought positively about a past experience” (122). Thus, negative thoughts that are caused by pessimism allow us to look more thoroughly when facing challenges and prepare us for future difficulties by eventually building in us a good skill of perseverance in asking and solving questions. In contrast to optimism, pessimistic thinking “does indeed ask us to limit and eliminate some of our hopes and expectations, but it can also provide the means to navigate the bounded universe it describes” (Dienstag 925). The fact that coping by means of a pessimistic way of thinking prepares us for success is not only supported in psychological research, but also agreed upon in the field of literature.
Pessimistic thinking allows us to take a sober look at the worst aspect of life, so that we are neither surprised nor afraid when we have to deal with these difficulties. William James presents his view in relation to the role of pessimism as “No fact in human nature is more characteristic than its willingness to live on a chance” (quoted in Fischer 241). The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche amplified the discussion by talking about the pessimism “of sensibility,…of ‘unfree will’,… of doubt”… “What must not be confused with all this: pleasure in saying No and doing No out of a tremendous strength and tension derived from saying Yes...the Dionysian in will, spirit, taste” (quoted in Dienstag 925). Nietzsche felt that “Tragedy is the outlet of mystic-pessimistic knowledge” (quoted in Dienstag 926). For him, Greek pessimism is “the only parable and parallel in history for my own innermost experience” (quoted in Dienstag 925). Dienstag then further illustrates Nietzsche’s view about the creative aspects of pessimism in us by saying that “far from being a psychological disposition, it is a set of practices intended to guide an individual through the chaotic and disenchanted world in which we find ourselves” (925). William James, Nietzsche, and Greek philosophers all bear the belief that we can only be successful if we know who we are, which means understanding our own limitations and weaknesses, in consequence of which we become capable of developing much needed skills. This highlights the benefits inherent in a way of thinking that allows for pessimism. In this sense, pessimism and success are strongly tied together, as can be found in ancient ideas and modern ideas alike.
Although our beliefs might change over time, facts do not. A study was done by Herbert Jasper in 1929, in which he gave a questionnaire that was about personality traits to a sampling of four types of colleges: a state normal school, a state university, a denominational university, and a private college. Interestingly, he discovered that: “ The ranking of the institutions studied, from the most optimistic and elative to the most pessimistic and depressive, as measured by the gross scores on the entire questionnaire, are as follows: (1) normal school, (2) denominational school, (3) state university, (4) private college” (873). This is completely the opposite of what we would expect. Even more amusingly:
There seems to be a positive relationship between the degree of intellectual sophistication present in a college environment and the degree of pessimism in social attitudes and the degree of depression in personality traits. There seems to be a positive correlation between the amount of naïve unsophisticated enthusiasms present on a college campus and the degree of optimism present in social attitudes and the degree of elation shown in personality traits (Jasper, 873).
Although this study is relatively old compared to others, its validity is not questionable. All these valid evidences strongly agree with each other, and prove one fact: Most of the time, pessimism neither leads us to depressive resignation nor does it allow us to only look at the worst possible outcomes. Rather, pessimistic thinking encourages us to ask questions, think deeply, and become capable of an inquisitive and firm attitude for now and for the future. It helps us to form a thoughtful approach to life, and so becomes an important ingredient to success.
Winston Churchill, the British statesman, orator, writer, artist and Prime Minister during World War II, once said that “A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” After graduating from Royal Military Academy in 1894, Churchill met financial difficulty when his payment was less than what he spent every month. In order to solve this problem on his own, instead of to ask money from parents, he devoted himself in military actions, particularly joining wars. Churchill even found himself had an interest in war correspondences later on.Yet, he faced an enormous challenge, was able to employ critical thinking when faced with overwhelming difficulties, was able to study the worst case scenarios in a brave manner and so contributed to maintain a free world.
In conclusion, pessimism leads us to success by making us be more adept to handle difficult conditions. A successful resolution of difficulties has various basic requirements, such as not being afraid when problems arise, not running away from but facing obstacles, being able to look at problems as a challenge that motivates. The world today is very competitive and selective. If we are not brave enough to meet difficulties, failure will come to us at once. Fredricks and coworkers make this point when talking about motivational deficits encountered among students: “These observations are particularly troubling in light of the claim that the new global, fast-changing economy requires knowledgeable workers who can synthesize and evaluate new information, think critically, and solve problems” (60). With a mind-set that allows for a critical, pessimistic “look at the worst aspects of things” when confronted by problems, we are brave enough to try out solutions, and not afraid about negative outcomes and so do not lose our motivation. With a capacity for pessimistic thinking that allows taking into account realistic limitations, there does not have to be an escape into shallow optimism. Success thus becomes touchable and realistic. Any of us can so be a successful person and inscribe a successful tomorrow into the book of our lives.
