![]() People try to fit their behaviors, indeed, fit their very selves, to what they see as desirable, and they try to keep away from what they see as undesirable. Goals are states or actions that people view as either desirable or undesirable. If the explanations are specific, the outlook for other areas of life may be brighter because the causes do not apply there (Meyers, 2006). If explanations for past failures are global (apply across aspects of life), the expectancy for the future across many domains will be for bad outcomes because the causal forces are at work everywhere. If attributions for past failures focus on causes that are unstable, then the outlook for the future may be brighter because the cause may no longer be in force. If explanations for past failures focus on causes that are stable, the person’s expectancy for the future in the same domain will be for bad outcomes because the cause is seen as relatively permanent and thus likely to remain in force. Another approach to optimism relies on the assumption that people’s expectancies for the future derive from their view of the causes of events in the past (Seligman, 1991 cited Lesko, 2005). Expectancies that are generalized- expectancies that pertain more or less to the person’s entire life space-are what we mean when we use the terms optimism and pessimism. One approach measures expectancies directly, asking people to indicate the extent to which they believe that their future outcomes will be good or bad. Impact of Expectations on Optimism and PessimismĮxpectancies are pivotal in theories of optimism, but there are at least two ways to think about expectancies and how to measure them (Lesko 2005). In both theories, the outcome must be of high importance, although this is emphasized more in hope theory (Lesko, 2005). In hope theory, however, the focus is on reaching desired future positive goal-related outcomes, with explicit emphases on the agency and pathways thoughts about the desired goal. Implicit in this theory is the importance placed on negative outcomes, and there is a goal-related quality in that optimistic people are attempting to distance themselves from negative outcomes. Selingman (1978) explains that In this regard, the optimistic attributional style is the pattern of external, variable, and specific attributions for failures instead of internal, stable, and global attributes that were the focus in the earlier helplessness model. Optimists are people who expect good things to happen to them pessimists are people who expect bad things to happen to them. “Dispositional optimism refers to generalized outcome expectancies that good things, rather than bad things, will happen pessimism refers to the tendency to expect negative outcomes in the future” (MacArthur & MacArthur 1999). This grounding in expectancies links the concepts of optimism and pessimism to a long tradition of expectancy-value models of motivation (Aspinwall & Brunhart 1996) The result of this is that the optimism construct, though having roots in folk wisdom, is also firmly grounded in decades of theory and research on human motives and how they are expressed in behavior. ![]() Scientific approaches to these constructs also rest on expectations for the future. Traditional definitions of optimism and pessimism rest on people’s expectations for the future. Optimists and pessimists differ in several ways that have a big impact on their lives. Without having a goal that matters, people have no reason to act. The more important a goal is to someone, the greater is its value within the person’s motivation. Optimistic and pessimistic views of people are influenced by life expectations and life circumstances, childhood experience and social position, etc. Optimism and pessimism are two important characteristics of an outlook on life and environment shared by every person. ![]() Attitudes towards life and the world around have a great impact on emotional and psychological state of a person, his/her life goals and well-being. ![]()
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