![]() ![]() And the same went for the pessimists, who were most successful when thinking negative thoughts. It seems that when the optimists were using their preferred positive thinking strategy, they were more persistent. It also turned out that people’s performance depended on how persistent they were at trying to crack the anagrams. At the same time optimists were more engaged with their task when they were thinking positive thoughts. ![]() What the results showed was that pessimists performed better when thinking in negative ways. This meant that some people would be using their preferred strategy and others would be forced to think against the grain. The researchers also measured participants’ natural tendencies towards either optimism or pessimism. While doing the anagrams half were encouraged to think optimistic thoughts and half pessimistic thoughts. So, in their third study they had participants trying to solve anagrams. This suggested a connection with motivation, but we need a true experiment for stronger evidence. By thinking about what might go wrong it helps protect us against when things do go wrong. For others a pessimistic mindset performs the same function. To cope with this unpredictability some of us choose to think optimistically because it helps motivate us to try, try again. It’s not that we’re doing anything wrong, just that life is unpredictable. Life is always throwing us curveballs and most of us accept that our plans often don’t work out. We all know how difficult it is to predict what’s going to happen in the future. How do people come to be polarized in this way? What’s my motivation?Ī clue comes from a new line of research into how both pessimists and optimists use their differing views of the world to motivate themselves. But we should be less concerned with which is ‘better’ or which camp is larger and more interested in why people see the world in such different ways in the first place.Īfter all, when an extreme optimist talks to an extreme pessimist, it’s like they come from two completely different worlds. ![]()
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