Just like most other psychological characteristics, nature (genetics and biology) and nurture (your surroundings) both contribute to dispositional optimism, says Segerstrom.Įxperts aren’t exactly sure how big of a role genetics play in optimism. Also called optimistic bias, unrealistic optimism refers to the way that we tend to expect good things to happen to us more often and bad things to happen less often than they do to others, explains Dr. Unrealistic OptimismĪt times, feeling hopeful about the future is part of a thought pattern that isn’t entirely logical - this is known as unrealistic optimism. And those with higher dispositional optimism are more likely to engage in explanatory optimism. Someone with low explanatory optimism will say their acceptance was just a lucky fluke, she adds.Įxplanatory optimism differs from dispositional optimism because explanatory optimism is a thinking pattern rather than a part of your personality - in other words, it’s a habit that can change through deliberate practice. On the flip side, you think bad things that happen to you aren’t necessarily your fault and won’t inevitably repeat.įor example, Trudel-Fitzgerald says that someone with high explanatory optimism who gets into grad school will attribute their good fortune to hard work and feel it bodes well for future career success. If you have high explanatory optimism, you’ll take good things that happen to you personally and feel confident they’ll keep happening, she says. Like the name suggests, this type of optimism has to do with how you explain why certain things happen to you, says Trudel-Fitzgerald. “As we go through life, through ups and downs, we’ll come back to our own level of optimism.” 2. “That means we all have a set point,” says Trudel-Fitzgerald. Unlike happiness and other emotions that ebb and flow throughout the day, dispositional optimism is essentially a personality trait and - unless you intentionally work at it - is mostly stable over time. When people with high dispositional optimism think about the future, they recognize they may face challenges, but ultimately believe they’ll figure things out, adds Trudel-Fitzgerald.
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