Michael F. Scheier

Dispositional optimism is a personality construct that reflects individual differences in generalized expectations about future outcomes. Unlike their pessimistic counterparts, optimists tend to approach the world expecting positive, as opposed to negative, outcomes to occur in their future, across different life domains. This definition makes dispositional optimism different from other, related concepts that address outcome expectancies of specific, situational transactions and behaviors or infer optimism through an individual’s interpretation of negative life events. Most research examines dispositional optimism by administering the “Life Orientation Test-Revised”, which assesses a person’s generalized optimistic and pessimistic outcome expectancies. Much of this work has treated dispositional optimism as a continuous, bipolar construct, ranging from high levels of pessimism to high levels of optimism. Other research, however, has examined optimistic and pessimistic outcome expectancies as separate, but related, constructs. Overall, the literature on dispositional optimism suggests that optimists live happier and healthier lives than pessimists. This entry reviews literature on optimism and provides an overview of the psychological mechanisms that make dispositional optimism an adaptive personal resource. The entry focuses on two important life-span developmental questions: 1) are there age-related changes in the benefits of optimism, and 2) can individuals become more optimistic over time?

Introduction Recent meta‐analytic research suggests that the absence of pessimism could be a stronger predictor of physical health than the presence of optimism. The present study examined the role of subjective well‐being in the effects of optimism and pessimism on physical health in romantic couples. It was hypothesized that pessimism would be more strongly associated with both well‐being and health than optimism, intra‐ and interpersonally. Subjective well‐being was also expected to explain variance in the associations between optimism, pessimism, and health. Methods A baseline sample of 153 opposite‐sex couples completed various measures of subjective well‐being (e.g., life satisfaction, positive and negative affect, and depressive symptoms) and physical health (e.g., subjective health, sleep efficiency, physical symptoms, cold symptoms, and chronic illness). Results Results of actor‐partner …

First, a disclaimer. I am not a bona fide social psychologist. I have taken social psychology courses at both the undergraduate and graduate level. I have also published research on topics that clearly fall within the purview of social psychology. Still, my formal training is not in social psychology, but in personality psychology, and the bulk of my research falls within the personality domain. Given my background, the perspectives offered in this chapter might differ somewhat from those offered by others, especially so concerning things to do going forward. Now that that is done, I can begin to describe how it was that I got to “here” from “there.” The difficulty, of course, is knowing exactly where “there” should begin. My formative years were largely unremarkable. I spent most of my time in California, living in Redondo Beach (a beach town south of Los Angeles) and in Carmichael (a suburb of Sacramento). I am particularly fond of my time in Redondo Beach, where I spent my summers fishing off the local pier in the morning and lying on the beach in the afternoon “working on my tan.” At that point in time, school was only something that I was required to do in the cooler months of the year.

Prior research has related dispositional optimism to physical health. Traditionally, dispositional optimism is treated as a bipolar construct, anchored at one end by optimism and the other by pessimism. Optimism and pessimism, however, may not be diametrically opposed, but rather may reflect 2 independent, but related dimensions. This article reports a reanalysis of data from previously published studies on dispositional optimism. The reanalysis was designed to evaluate whether the presence of optimism or the absence of pessimism predicted positive physical health more strongly. Relevant literatures were screened for studies relating dispositional optimism to physical health. Authors of relevant studies were asked to join a consortium, the purpose of which was to reanalyze previously published data sets separating optimism and pessimism into distinguishable components. Ultimately, data were received from 61 …

This chapter addresses three topics: stress, coping, and some of the self-regulatory structures and processes that the authors believe underlie personality. At their core, self-regulatory models of action are organized around people's efforts to create and maintain desired conditions in their lives. Some desired conditions are relatively static (eg, a house being set up the way you want it, good health, food in the refrigerator). Others are more dynamic (eg, developing a career, helping a child grow into a responsible adult, taking an enjoyable and enriching vacation). Self-regulatory efforts often run off smoothly, untroubled by external impediments or personal shortcomings. Sometimes, however, people encounter difficulties in doing what they want to do, being what they want to be, or keeping their reality ordered the way they want it. The chapter explores what self-regulation models tell us about the experience of stress …

Another approach relies on the idea that people’s expectancies for the future stem from their interpretations of the past. Explaining bad outcomes by causes that persist into the future and affect many kinds of events implies pessimism. Such explanations imply that bad outcomes will continue in the future. An attributional style that explains negative events by causes that are more time limited and narrower in their effects implies more optimism.Over time researchers have tended to rely more and more heavily on the direct approach when assessing optimism. It is the more direct and efficient of the two approaches that are available. Moreover, by having adults answer questions about the optimism of children, researchers have been able use the direct approach to reliability and validly assess optimism in children as young as 7 years of age (Lemola et al. 2010). Researchers on optimism often refer to optimists and …

VanderWeele and Kubzansky (2021) provide a commentary on Scheier et al.(2021), in which they introduce the distinction between what they term comparative and absolute optimism. We believe that more conceptual and empirical work is needed before a full understanding of the meaning and implications of the terms can be known. In contrast, the construal of optimism and pessimism as separate but related dimensions is founded on decades of research. Moreover, as shown in Scheier et al.(2021), the absence of pessimism is a better predictor of physical health outcomes than is the presence of optimism, which in turn has implications for how interventions might be devised.(PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

Presents an obituary for Charles S. Carver (1947-2019). Carver was known for his pioneering theory and research on behavioral self-regulation as reflected in goal-directed action. Carver has been honored by the American Psychological Association (APA), Divisions 38 (Society of Health Psychology) and 8 (Society for Personality and Social Psychology), for his career contributions to the areas of health, social, and personality psychology. Carver served for 6 years as the editor of the Personality Processes and Individual Differences section of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and another 6 years as an associate editor of Psychological Review. He authored 10 books and over 425 articles and chapters.(PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)