On both of these scales, a person considering positive events to be happening due to internal, stable, and global events is considered to have an optimistic explanatory style. In this method, good and bad events are rated along three dimensions (internal, stable, global) using a seven-point continuum. Attributional style can also be assessed through spoken or written material, using the content analysis of verbatim explanations (CAVE) method Peterson and colleagues developed in 1983. For each event, the person gives one major cause for why the event occurred and rates the internality, stability, and globality of the cause. The ASQ consists of six negative event items and six positive event items. Optimists ’ tendency to attribute negative events to unstable, specific, and external causes contributes to their resiliency to negative experiences and helplessness.Īttributional style is measured with the Attributional Style Questionnaire (ASQ), which Chris Peterson and colleagues developed in 1982. Pessimists on the other hand, are more likely to interpret bad events as long lasting, pervasive in scope, and due to their own fault. Optimists interpret bad events as temporary, limited in scope, and not resulting from personal fault. To account for human variation in responses to uncontrollability, the attributional reformulation of learned helplessness specifically focused on people ’s explanations for events. Seligman ’s work on learned helplessness. Often referred to as attributional or explanatory style, this approach is based on Martin E. Both of these measures therefore provide the most direct assessment of optimism and pessimism as people usually understand these constructs.Īnother approach to optimism, separate from the dispositional optimism approach, assumes that expectancies are based on individual interpretations of previous experiences. The LOT and its revised version, the LOT-R, contain items measuring both positive and negative expectancies (e.g., “In uncertain times, I usually expect the best ” and “If something can go wrong for me, it will ”). Carver developed the dispositional optimism concept in 1985, as well as one of the most popular measures used to assess optimism and pessimism, the Life Orientation Test (LOT). One of the most recognized contemporary theories of optimism assumes expectancies to be dispositional, and refers to generalized expectancies that apply more or less across a person ’s entire life span. The optimism construct is therefore also grounded in decades of theory and research on motivation and on how such motivation is expressed through behavior. The construct of optimism is in many ways rooted in folk wisdom, but scientific approaches have linked the concepts of optimism and pessimism to expectancy models of motivation. Furthermore, these individual differences appear to be stable across time and context. Some individuals are optimistic and tend to be positive in their outlook and expectations for the future, whereas others are pessimistic and tend to have more negative expectations. People differ in how they approach the world.
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