I have had countless quizzes, tests, mid-term exams, final-term exams in my life, but if I had to choose one of them as the most special one, that would be my third-try ACT test, which left the deepest impression with me. The third ACT test I took had the easiest math problems ever. I can still remember my heart began to jump harder and harder as I moved on in the math section. However, I got stuck on the last math problem. After trying for more than five minutes, I was ready to quit. Most of the people in that classroom had already turned over their booklets at that time, but there was one guy who was still working. Suddenly, I knew what I should do. I went back to the problem and successfully solved it at the last second. Surprisingly, that one point pushed my ACT score from a 23 to a 24, which made a huge difference on my high school graduating record. From that moment on, the word “persistence” became rooted in my heart. Persistence makes our life different, and this can be considered in the comparison of optimism and pessimism.
Prior to comparing the difference between optimism and pessimism, as well as the role each plays in contributing to our successes, it is also important to understand the relationship between these two. This means looking not only at the impact of either optimism or pessimism on success, but also raising the question whether there is a more complicated relationship between optimism, pessimism and success. An interesting question was raised by Frank Fincham: “whether optimism and pessimism are simply opposite ends of the same bipolar continuum or whether they are distinct, unipolar constructs that have different origins, structures, and relations with other constructs, such as health and maladjustment” (Seligman 299). “It might make sense to consider optimism and pessimism separately”, as suggested by Fincham; Seligman then concluded that “the opposite of optimistically expecting things to go well in the future is to not think that things will go well. This is different from having a pessimistic expectation that things are going to work out especially badly” (300). To explore the relationship between these two in a deeper sense, we are going to look at the strength and weakness of optimism.
Optimism is defined as “the character or quality of being for the best; hopefulness and confidence about the future or the successful outcome of something” in the Oxford English Dictionary. “Optimistic thinking is associated with successful cognitive and self-regulatory problem solving, with pro-social and helping behavior, with setting high standards and aspirations, and with indicators of mental health—all of these factors are essential for well-being and personality development” (Oettingen 1198). People who are optimistic have a positive attitude toward their works and lives. They have hope and positive expectations on the outcome of what they are doing, and they look straight ahead without being afraid of failure. “High expectations of success lead to strong performance, and strong performance leads to high expectations of success” (Oettingen 1200). While optimistic people have a high chance to be successful by keeping their hope, pessimistic people have a reduced chance of being successful by only looking at the possible negative outcome of things.
Pessimism is defined as “the tendency or disposition to look at the worst aspect of things; the attitude or habit of taking a negative view of circumstances, the future, etc”. According to Seligman, Abramson, Peterson, and their colleagues’ research during 1980s and 1990s, they discovered that pessimism can be viewed as “people's tendency to give up efforts to change bad outcomes” and that this “was due to a predisposition to view bad outcomes as being caused by internal, stable, and global characteristics” (Buchanan, 1995). “Research consistently finds that optimistic thinking about the future fosters motivation and successful performance, whereas pessimistic thinking dampens motivation and successful performance” (Oettingen 1198). This argument is further supported by Sherman, who “suggested that the formation of explicit expectancies for future performance induces commitment effects, which leads to reduced effort when subjects commit themselves to a low performance level” (Goodhart 119). Although pessimism can increase complacency, it can be a good thing in certain situation.
Pessimism can actually be advantageous when it is associated with the behavioral perspective of students, primarily when it leads to greater persistence out of a worry about failure or about mistakes that may have been made. One of the examples is Sciarra and Seirup’s research that was done in 2008. The purpose of their research was to explore the relationship between the “multidimensional (behavioral, emotional, and cognitive) construct of school engagement and the mathematics achievement” (Sciarra 218) within students who come from different countries. Interestingly, they found that “behavioral and cognitive engagement accounted for much more of the variance in math achievement scores than did emotional engagement” (Sciarra 218). Moreover, behavioral engagement was further defined by Fredrick as “involvement in learning and academic tasks and includes behaviors such as effort, persistence, concentration, attention, asking questions, and contributing to class discussion” (62). Thus, the achievement of Japanese students, particularly in mathematics, is attributed to their pessimistic attitude and greater pessimism in the sense of their greater concern about possible mistakes or failures. Not only that, pessimism enhances our behaviors to be successful sometimes.
Sometimes, we quit achieving our goals when we see the possibility of failure that is behind our efforts. As Schneider points out in his article titled In Search of Realistic Optimism : Meaning, Knowledge, and Warm Fuzziness, “If positive thinking in the face of adversity pays dividends, so, too, can a dash of realism” (). Realistic anxiety sometimes can prevent us from doing useless work and thus help us being purposeful and successful indirectly. On other hand, just like pessimism has both an advantage and a disadvantage, optimism has its own two-side effect as well.
Optimism is not always a good thing; excessive optimism is dangerous and unrealistic. “Not all optimistic thinking is realistic, even if we concede that reality is at least partially negotiable and subjective” (Schneider 252). Optimistic thinking can even blind us to real risks sometimes. “Those with an optimistic explanatory style tend to attribute unexpected bad outcomes to external, unstable, and specific factors but tend to attribute unexpected good outcomes to internal, stable, and global factors” (Schneider 262). Further more, Weinstein, Lyons, Sandman, and Cuite supposed this idea in 1998 by saying that “those who optimistically underestimated the risk of radon in their homes were less likely than others to engage in risk detection and risk reduction behaviors” (1998). As we can see, although success needs the participation of optimistic thinking, excessive optimism can cause unwanted trouble at the same time.
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