Habitual optimism is claimed to improve performance and life outcomes.
Peale's 1952 book founded the modern genre. The research that grew up later distinguishes dispositional optimism, which has modest associations with coping and health, from the prescription to think positively, which is not the same thing and which can impair performance in people who use anxiety to prepare.
In practice
- An optimist and a defensive pessimist prepare differently and perform comparably, which the doctrine does not allow.
- A team told to stay positive has been told not to raise the risk register.
- Possible explanations
- One explanation is expectancy, which affects persistence. Another is that optimism changes what people attempt, so outcomes differ through behaviour rather than through thought alone.
- In its favour
- Dispositional optimism has modest associations with coping and some health outcomes, and pessimistic explanatory style does predict worse persistence.
- Against it
- The research distinguishes dispositional optimism from positive fantasising, and the second predicts lower effort and attainment, so the doctrine's practical advice runs against the evidence for the part it most emphasises.
- Standing
- Testimonial evidence selected on success, with no comparison group. Dispositional optimism does correlate with some health and coping outcomes, at modest size and with the causal direction unsettled. The stronger claim, and defensive pessimism's effectiveness for some people, both cut against the doctrine.
- Subject
- Psychology & Behavior
- Essay
- Moralists, aphorists and the self-help tradition