Are You an Optimist or Pessimist About Our Changing World?

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Which do you think is better: to be an optimist and maintain a strong sense of hope and risk future disappointment or a pessimist and be riddled with depression and anxiety about imminent doom and then feel elated when the worst is overcome?

Get Real

Two economists, David de Meza of the London School of Economics and Chris Dawson of the University of Bath, set out to answer this question. They examined the responses of 1,601 individuals in the British Household Panel Survey to two questions they repeatedly answered every year between 1991 and 2009: “How do you think you will be financially a year from now?” and (a year later) “Would you say that you are better off, worse off or the same financially than you were a year ago?”

De Meza and Dawson then looked at the well-being of these individuals to determine if the optimists or pessimists were happier or more miserable based on whether or not they achieved their financial goals. Two findings from their study shed light on whether it’s a better idea to be an optimist or a pessimist.

First, the people who accurately predicted their financial situation a year later—the realists—were the happiest a year later. The well-being of both the optimists (those who over-estimated their financial success a year later) and the pessimists (who under-estimated how financially successful they would be after a year) was significantly lower.

In other words, it’s better to be a realist and possess the ability to accurately forecast your future than to be an optimist or a pessimist. Just about every psychological approach to mental health, for that matter, is built upon the assumption, as Duke University psychologist Mark Leary reminds us, that “having an accurate view of reality is a hallmark of psychological adjustment.”

This realistic view includes nondefensively, open-heartedly accepting one’s strengths and challenges—in short, heeding the words of Blaise Pascal. “We are all something,” contends the French philosopher, “but none of us are everything.” Distorting reality, on the other hand, is associated in almost every psychological approach with disorder and maladjustment.

No Crystal Ball

OK, so it’s good to be able to predict the future. Yet here’s some realism: most of us can’t. Based on our natural inclinations and dispositions, each of us errs on the side of either over- or under-estimating our future prospects—including the future fate of the world.

For this reason, it’s the second finding of de Meza and Dawson that is more intriguing and far-reaching: while optimists felt 11.8 percent more distress than realists, pessimists experienced 37.2 percent more psychological distress.

In other words, those who are unrealistically pessimistic and live in a state of foreboding about imminent doom experience over three times more distress—even when they are pleasantly surprised that it’s not as bad as they thought—than those who are unrealistically optimistic and have their sights on better times that are inflated beyond what actually transpires.

Yet there are also a few reasons why unbridled optimism should not go to extremes. First, we can develop a naïve approach to risk taking when we do not heed the socio-functional purpose of negative emotions, which contain a signaling effect to help us become more vigilant and aware of the threats around us. Plausibly for this reason, a correlation has been found between viewing what’s happening around you through an overly positive lens and high-risk sexual activity among gay and bisexual men.

Second, optimists do not tend to have an accurate view of their own challenges and so often pursue opportunities for which they are not ideally suited. (Leary, 2007) Exhibit A: the karaoke singer who precipitously selects a song that does not fit their vocal range whatsoever. (This example, unfortunately, is autobiographical.)

Third, as one of the founders of humanistic psychology, Carl Rogers, suggests, adopting a distorted view of reality creates tension, unhappiness, and anxiety within a person (Rogers, 1959).

The Pros and Cons of Unmitigated Optimism

In fact, research has found that optimists tend to live longer, happier and healthier lives than pessimists. Why? Two primary reasons. First, as UCLA psychologist Shelley Taylor has found, unrealistic optimists experience less negative emotions than pessimists and are more persistently motivated to achieve their life goals as they feel more certain of their success.

Second, research by SUNY social psychologist Sandra Murray has discovered that optimists are kinder toward and help others more than pessimists. Hope, after all, is an opiate. It provides a reason to continue. It also provides a reason, apparently, to be a better human being.

How Do You Wish to Spend Your Time?

In practical terms, consider the long-term effects on your well-being of spending untold hours, day after day, filled with positivity and hope about a brighter future versus passing these hours filled with dread about your life going to pot (with a slight uplift when it turns out better than you expected).

The best solution may be to become an “optimistic realist”—or what New York Times columnist David Brooks calls a “happy realist”—who balances a positive outlook with a realistic appraisal of what is happening in your life and in the world.

Like the rest of us, you have a choice to make every single day of your life: to focus on becoming better or to become bitter.

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Consider the word “pre-judice”: it comes from “before” and “judgment.” Prejudice is to judge someone before speaking with them.

The truth is that you will never understand another person unless you listen to them and immerse yourself deeply into their experience.

And that’s only the beginning of understanding: as the latest research has found, personality is malleable; we are constantly changing.

Each of us can make the decision to get to know people of other ethnicities on a human level and then share what we learn with others.

Why? Our future depends on it.

What conversations do you need to have to allow people different from you to become more human in your mind?

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