Optimism. like hope means having a strong expectation that in general, things will turn out all right in life, despite frustrations. From the standpoint of emotional intelligence, optimism is an attitude that buffers people against falling into apathy, hopelessness, or depression in the face of toughgoing.
People who are optimistic think that even if they fail, still it can be changed and that they can succeed next time around while pessimistic think that once they fail they are helpless to change. These differing explanations have enormous implications for how people respond to life. For example, in reaction to a disappointment such as being turned down for a job, optimists tend to respond actively and positively that if they seek out help and advice that problem can be remedied. Pessimists, in contrast will react to such problems by assuming that they can do nothing about it, they see the setback as due to some personal deficit that will always hurdle them down.
As with hope, optimism predicts academic success. For example, a student’s scores on a test of optimism were a better predictor of their actual grade during their freshmen year than were their SAT scores or their high school grades. It is the combination of reasonable talent and the ability to keep going in the face of defeat that leads to success. What’s missing in tests of ability is motivation. Your actual achievement is function not just of talents, but also the capacity to stand defeat. The pessimimsts mental set leads to despair, the optimists sees hope.
Albert Bandura, a Stanford psychologists who has done much of the research on self-efficiency, sums it well; “People’s beliefs about their abilities have profound effect on those abilities. Ability is not a fixed property; there is a huge variability in how you perform. People who have a sense of self-efficiency bounce back from failures; they approach things in terms of how to handle them rather than worrying about what can go wrong.”
By: Florabel R. Valenzuela | Teacher I | Mariveles National High School | Mariveles, Bataan
