One approach is to consider it as a psychological trait: Spiegel, A. (2020, May 20). Optimism: Is it a personality trait, or could people possibly learn it? NPR. https://www.npr.org/2020/05/20/859713746/optimism-is-it-a-personality-trait-or-could-people-possibly-learn-it
much therapy aims to move the needle on traits: Sauer-Zavala, S. (2024, September 25). Can you change your personality? Psychology research says yes, by tweaking what you think and do. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/can-you-change-your-personality-psychology-research-says-yes-by-tweaking-what-you-think-and-do-237190
it wasn’t until 2022 that we had a full list of the twelve thousand genetic variants that influence [height]: DiCorato, A. (2022, October 14). Scientists uncover nearly all genetic variants linked to height. Harvard Medical School. https://hms.harvard.edu/news/scientists-uncover-nearly-all-genetic-variants-linked-height
Identical twins have (almost) exactly the same genes: Jonsson, H., Magnusdottir, E., Eggertsson, H. P., Stefansson, O. A., Arnadottir, G. A., Eiriksson, O., Zink, F., Helgason, E. A., Jonsdottir, I., Gylfason, A., Jonasdottir, A., Jonasdottir, A., Beyter, D., Steingrimsdottir, T., Norddahl, G. L., Magnusson, O. Th., Masson, G., Halldorsson, B. V., Thorsteinsdottir, U., & Helgason, A. (2021). Differences between germline genomes of monozygotic twins. Nature Genetics, 53, 27–34. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41588-020-00755-1
One of the earliest twin studies to look at optimism was published in 1991: Plomin, R., Scheier, M. F., Bergeman, C. S., Pedersen, N. L., Nesselroade, J. R., & McClearn, G. E. (1992). Optimism, pessimism and mental health: A twin/adoption analysis. Personality and Individual Differences, 13(8), 921–930. https://doi.org/10.1016/0191-8869(92)90009-e
A larger twin study, reported in 2015 by Timothy Bates of the University of Edinburgh: Bates, T. C. (2015). The glass is half full and half empty: A population-representative twin study testing if optimism and pessimism are distinct systems. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 10(6), 533–542. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2015.1015155
‘significant (and substantial) effects of family-level environment and of personal or unique environmental influences’ [footnote]: Bates’s study also added weight to a body of research which suggests that pessimism is, in biological terms, a separate, distinct trait, with overlapping but different genetic and neurological underpinnings to optimism. This is pretty confusing, given our everyday understanding of the term, but might help explain how we can be optimistic about some things while being pessimistic about others. As usual with the human mind, it’s complicated.
Herzberg, P. Y., Glaesmer, H., & Hoyer, J. (2006). Separating optimism and pessimism: A robust psychometric analysis of the Revised Life Orientation Test (LOT-R). Psychological Assessment, 18(4), 433–438. https://doi.org/10.1037/1040-3590.18.4.433
Hecht, D. (2013). The neural basis of optimism and pessimism. Experimental Neurobiology, 22(3), 173–199. https://doi.org/10.5607/en.2013.22.3.173
Scheier, M. F., Swanson, J. D., Barlow, M. A., Greenhouse, J. B., Wrosch, C., & Tindle, H. A. (2021). Optimism versus pessimism as predictors of physical health: A comprehensive reanalysis of dispositional optimism research. American Psychologist, 76(3), 529–548. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000666
They may even believe it’s possible to overcome such deficits as poor eyesight or a missing finger: Lockhart, K. L., Chang, B., & Story, T. (2002). Young children’s beliefs about the stability of traits: Protective optimism? Child Development, 73(5), 1408–1430. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8624.00480
They also believe the same is true for their friends: Boseovski, J. J. (2010). Evidence for “rose-colored glasses”: An examination of the positivity bias in young children’s personality judgments. Child Development Perspectives, 4(3), 212–218. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1750-8606.2010.00149.x
This isn’t hard to explain: Leonard, J. A., & Sommerville, J. A. (2024). A unified account of why optimism declines in childhood. Nature Reviews Psychology, 4, 35–48. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-024-00384-z
A University College London team asked just over 100 London schoolchildren: Habicht, J., Bowler, A., Moses-Payne, M. E., & Hauser, T. U. (2021). Children are full of optimism, but those rose-tinted glasses are fading – reduced learning from negative outcomes drives hyperoptimism in children. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 151(8), 1843–1853. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001138
The neuroscientist Tali Sharot decided to find out: Sharot, T., Korn, C. W., & Dolan, R. J. (2011). How unrealistic optimism is maintained in the face of reality. Nature Neuroscience, 14, 1475–1479. https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.2949
his mission is ‘to steer psychology away from the darkness and toward light’: Gibbon, P. (2020). Martin Seligman and the rise of positive psychology. Humanities, 41(3). https://www.neh.gov/article/martin-seligman-and-rise-positive-psychology
including 1991’s Learned Optimism: Seligman, M. (1991). Learned optimism: How to change your mind and your life. Alfred A. Knopf
Seligman’s line of inquiry started in a way few people would automatically associate with optimism: as described in Seligman, M. E. P. (2019). The hope circuit: A psychologist’s journey from helplessness to optimism. Nicholas Brealey Publishing. https://openlibrary.org/books/OL32811269M/The_Hope_Circuit (Original work published 2018)
Original paper: Seligman, M. E., & Maier, S. F. (1967). Failure to escape traumatic shock. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 74(1), 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0024514
Seligman, M. E. P. (1972). Learned helplessness. Annual Review of Medicine, 23, 407–412. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.me.23.020172.002203
‘Who survives when his work comes to nothing or when he is rejected by someone he has loved long and deeply?’ [Seligman] wrote in Learned Optimism: Seligman, M. (1991). Learned optimism: How to change your mind and your life. Alfred A. Knopf. https://openlibrary.org/books/OL1889740M/Learned_optimism
she passed on the third attempt, but only, she says, because the instructor was kind [footnote]: I’ve obscured her identity, for obvious reasons, but also because I can do without listening to her protest that she really is an awful driver.
although she actually has much the same record behind the wheel that I do: Most people think they are better at driving than they actually are: Briggs, G. (2024, September 5). Think you’re better at driving than most? How psychological biases are keeping our roads unsafe. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/think-youre-better-at-driving-than-most-how-psychological-biases-are-keeping-our-roads-unsafe-237402
But it’s long been recognised that there are significant gender and age divides: Franckx, L. (2017, July 26). Overconfidence and optimism bias and traffic safety. Mind-Sets Knowledge Centre. https://mobilitybehaviour.eu/2017/07/26/overconfidence-and-optimism-bias-and-traffic-safety/
the Attributional Style Questionnaire (ASQ) presents you with six positive and six negative scenarios: Peterson, C., Semmel, A., von Baeyer, C., Abramson, L. Y., Metalsky, G. I., & Seligman, M. E. P. (1982). The Attributional Style Questionnaire. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 6, 287–299. https://doi.org/10.1007/bf01173577
The ASQ then asks you to write down why such an event might have happened… just situations much like this one (specific) [footnote]: The ASQ also asks people to rate how important such an event would be to them, in case that made a difference to the attributions people made; but in the event, it didn’t.
Seligman and another colleague, Peter Schulman, put this idea to the test with a group destined to suffer frequent, perpetual setbacks: people who sell life insurance: Seligman, M. E., & Schulman, P. (1986). Explanatory style as a predictor of productivity and quitting among life insurance sales agents. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50(4), 832–838. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.50.4.832
Seligman got the entire entering class of 1987 at Virginia Law School to take the ASQ: Seligman, M. E. P. (2007, November 16). Why are lawyers so unhappy? Lawyers with Depression. https://www.lawyerswithdepression.com/articles/why-are-lawyers-so-unhappy/
Excerpted from Seligman, M. E. P. (2002). Authentic Happiness: Using the new positive psychology to realise your potential for lasting fulfilment. The Free Press.
In Learned Optimism, Seligman gives the example of someone inclined towards pessimistic explanations who discovers they’ve lost an expensive earring borrowed from a friend: Seligman, M. (1992). Learned optimism: How to change your mind and your life (pp. 223–225). Pocket Books. https://openlibrary.org/books/OL1554149M/Learned_optimism
There’s plenty of anecdotal evidence for that, posted all over the positive-psychology internet: e.g. Mantell, M. (2023, November 28). Learned optimism: Examples, signs, and does it work? Science of People. https://www.scienceofpeople.com/learned-optimism/
It seems a short distance from optimising your explanatory style to self-affirming ‘toxic positivity’, about which many words have already been spilt: The best of those words are from the incomparable Barbara Ehrenreich, in her book Bright-Sided:
Ehrenreich, B. (2010). Bright-sided: How positive thinking is undermining America. Picador. https://openlibrary.org/works/OL17728163W/Bright-sided?edition=isbn_9780312658854
Just asking people to think about the future can have a short-lived effect: Fosnaugh, J., Geers, A. L., & Wellman, J. A. (2009). Giving off a rosy glow: The manipulation of an optimistic orientation. The Journal of Social Psychology, 149(3), 349–364. https://doi.org/10.3200/socp.149.3.349-364
There are also drugs that achieve the same effect: Sharot, T., Guitart-Masip, M., Korn, Christoph W., Chowdhury, R., & Dolan, Raymond J. (2012). How dopamine enhances an optimism bias in humans. Current Biology, 22(16), 1477–1481. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2012.05.053
Fisher, E. L., Smith, R., Conn, K., Corcoran, A. W., Milton, L. K., Hohwy, J., & Foldi, C. J. (2024). Psilocybin increases optimistic engagement over time: Computational modelling of behaviour in rats. Translational Psychiatry, 14, 394. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41398-024-03103-7
researchers trialling a wide variety of techniques, including cognitive behavioural therapy, mindfulness and meditation, and daily visualisations of eagerly anticipated future experiences, as well as more esoteric approaches such as sensory deprivation and even lying on a bed of nails.
CBT: Radfar, M., Yavari, S., Haghighi, M., & Gharaaghaji Asl, R. (2022). Cognitive-behavioral group therapy in major depressive disorder with focus on self-esteem and optimism: an interventional study. BMC Psychiatry, 22, 299. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12888-022-03918-y
Mindfulness: Heckenberg, R. A., Hale, M. W., Kent, S., & Wright, B. J. (2019). An online mindfulness-based program is effective in improving affect, over-commitment, optimism and mucosal immunity. Physiology & Behavior, 199, 20–27. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physbeh.2018.11.001
Visualisations: Murphy, S. E., O’Donoghue, M. C., Drazich, E. H. S., Blackwell, S. E., Nobre, A. C., & Holmes, E. A. (2015). Imagining a brighter future: The effect of positive imagery training on mood, prospective mental imagery and emotional bias in older adults. Psychiatry Research, 230(1), 36–43. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2015.07.059
Flotation tank: Kjellgren, A., & Westman, J. (2014). Beneficial effects of treatment with sensory isolation in flotation-tank as a preventive health-care intervention – a randomized controlled pilot trial. BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine, 14, 417. https://doi.org/10.1186/1472-6882-14-417
Bed of nails: Kjellgren, A., Erdefelt, K., Werngren, L., & Norlander, T. (2011). Does relaxation on a bed of nails (spike mat) induce beneficial effects? A randomized controlled pilot study. Alternative Medicine Studies, 1(1), e5. https://doi.org/10.4081/ams.2011.e5
A more plausible contender is the ‘best possible self’ (BPS) exercise, invented by Laura King of Southern Methodist University in 2001: King, L. A. (2001). The health benefits of writing about life goals. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 27(7), 798–807. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167201277003
Overall, participants in a best-possible-self exercise seem to enjoy a modest increase: Malouff, J. M., & Schutte, N. S. (2016). Can psychological interventions increase optimism? A meta-analysis. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 12(6), 594–604. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2016.1221122
‘A mind is fundamentally an anticipator, an expectation-generator…’ wrote the philosopher of cognition Daniel Dennett in his 1996 book, Kinds of Minds: Dennett, D. C. (1996). Kinds of minds: Toward an understanding of consciousness. Basic Books.
The full quote is: ‘The task of the mind is to produce future, as the poet Paul Valéry once put it. A mind is fundamentally an anticipator, an expectation-generator. It mines the present for clues, which it refines with the help of the materials it has saved from the past, turning them into anticipations of the future. And then it acts, rationally, on the basis of those hard-won anticipations.’
Dennett does not provide a source for the Valéry reference, and I’ve been unable to track it down: if anyone knows where it comes from, please tell me! (I reference Valéry later in The Bright Side, as the originator of the perhaps related trope “The future isn’t what it used to be”.)
impressions of the present moment, each around two and a half seconds long: Spinney, L. (2015, January 7). The time illusion: How your brain creates now. New Scientist. https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22530030-500-the-time-illusion-how-your-brain-creates-now/
In 1953, a 27-year-old man code-named ‘Patient H.M.’ underwent radical brain surgery: Dossani, R. H., Missios, S., & Nanda, A. (2015). The legacy of Henry Molaison (1926–2008) and the impact of his bilateral mesial temporal lobe surgery on the study of human memory. World Neurosurgery, 84(4), 1127–1135. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wneu.2015.04.031
people who suffered from hippocampal amnesia in 2011 [correction]: It should not say ‘in 2011’: Hassabis, D., Kumaran, D., Vann, S. D., & Maguire, E. A. (2007). Patients with hippocampal amnesia cannot imagine new experiences. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104(5), 1726–1731. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0610561104
Hassabis, D., & Maguire, E. A. (2007). Deconstructing episodic memory with construction. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11(7), 299–306. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2007.05.001
Instead, its various aspects are ‘encoded’ in the connections between particular groups of neurons: Lisman, J., Buzsáki, G., Eichenbaum, H., Nadel, L., Ranganath, C., & Redish, A. D. (2017). Viewpoints: How the hippocampus contributes to memory, navigation and cognition. Nature Neuroscience, 20, 1434–1447. https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.4661
‘mental time travel’: Fisher, R. (2024, May 29). How to do mental time travel. Psyche. https://psyche.co/guides/feeling-overwhelmed-in-the-present-try-mental-time-travel
Tali Sharot, with colleagues, asked a group of volunteers to imagine a range of events: Sharot, T., Riccardi, A. M., Raio, C. M., & Phelps, E. A. (2007). Neural mechanisms mediating optimism bias. Nature, 450, 102–105. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature06280
More detail in Sharot, T. (2012). The optimism bias: Why we’re wired to look on the bright side (pp. 88–89). Robinson. https://openlibrary.org/works/OL34597385M/Optimism_Bias
the psychologists Philip Zimbardo and John Boyd, who came up with a questionnaire, the ‘Time Perspective Inventory’: Zimbardo, P. G., & Boyd, J. N. (1999). Putting time in perspective: A valid, reliable individual-differences metric. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77(6), 1271–1288. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.77.6.1271Time perspective theory. (2023, October 19). Dr. Philip G. Zimbardo. https://www.zimbardo.com/time-perspective-theory/