The optimists have taken over the asylum. Consistent with the uniquely “can-do” American spirit, the positive psychology movement urges everyone to look on the bright side, and supports its exhortations with study after study that demonstrate how healthy optimism is. Longer life, better health, job success and more of nearly everything good is said to end up on the optimist’s plate. Positive psychology is the scientific and clinical version of a deeply held American belief. Norman Vincent Peale once gave us the Power of Positive Thinking. Ronald Reagan rallied voters with “Morning in America.” It was optimism that explored the New World and dared to push on westward. Optimism once sang Don’t Worry Be Happy. In California it says, It’s All Good.
There is a lot of truth to the functional advantage of optimism.
But like all truths, it is only partial. Is it better to be optimistic? The answer once again is, it depends. For the pessimistically inclined, pessimism may be a very useful strategy. This is not to defend the gloom and doom kind of pessimist who turns every sunny day into a potential thunderstorm. Only silly pessimists would deny beauty and love and joy. But there is a functional kind of pessimism that some writers have called “defensive pessimism’, or “realistic pessimism.”
Pessimists can be motivated and energized by their pessimism. In one study, pessimistic college students predict that they will perform more poorly on an exam than optimistic students. Yet they performed just as well. The researchers repeated the experiment, this time encouraging each student by predicting that they will do well. The encouragement had no effect on the optimists, but it impaired the performance of the pessimistic students! It may be that the reassurance interfered with the strategy pessimists use to motivate themselves: generate a little anxiety, and turn it into productivity.
Pessimists plan for the unfortunate contingency because they think about what might go wrong. Emergency managers’ stock in trade is pessimism. The realistic odds are with the pessimists; one day, an accident will happen, so pack a first aid kit. Sign that prenup.
Back in 2005, New Orleans literally drowned in optimism. FEMA and the Homeland Security bureaucracy failed New Orleans, and thereby the entire country, with their optimistic judgment that the levees would hold through hurricane Katrina and everything would be all right. Where were the pessimists when we needed them?
So move over, Optimists, and let the Pessimists stand tall with you. Acceptance is your matchmaker. You need each other in order to know the whole picture; the glass is both half empty and half full.