PSY 180: Lecture 6, Introduction to Optimism
What is optimism?
A ______________________________________ associated with an expectation about the
social or material future- one for which the evaluator regards as socially desirable, to his or
her advantage or for his or her pleasure
No objective definition because it depends on what the individual believes is
___________________
History of optimism
Is it human nature?
Sophocles and Nietzsche argued that it prolongs ___________________ - face reality
will ya?
Freud believed that optimism was all over the place but leads to the denial of our
instinctual nature and the denial ___________________
Freud argued that religions ___________________ the idea of optimism
“God will lead me through life and beyond”
Freud continued
Optimism led to ___________________
Psychodynamic ideas of Freud argued that a ___________________ person needs to
see the world as it is without illusions
Thus by nature optimists are mentally ___________________ according to
historical thought
“______________________________________” was done to test for
psychological problems
Must be realistic about the present and the future
Only modest expectations about the future would count as realistic
Cognitive theorists
Began to show that negativity ______________________________________ and that
positivity led to psychologically healthy people
Martin Seligman: ______________________________________
Shelly Taylor: ___________________ ___________________
More on her next lecture
Learned Helplessness: The original work
Researchers wanted to show that learning could transfer to different situations
Normally, dogs will jump a barrier to avoid a ___________________
Classical Conditioning
Paired a ___________________ with a shock
___________________ – leads to fear
Trained the animal
___________________ then ___________________ then ___________________
Eventually, the tone leads to the fear response
Original Idea
Put animal in the ___________________
Don’t shock them this time, but play a ___________________
See if the learned association between a tone and shock would generalize to this
situation
What should happen if the learning generalizes?
The animal should ______________________________________
Bizarre observation
The dogs would just ______________________________________; in fact, even when
shocked, this group of dogs would just __________________________________________
How to explain this
Normal dog: when shocked in shuttle box, ___________________ to other side
The trained dog (tone paired with shock) will not try to ___________________
Seligman hypothesized that the trained dogs had learned more than tone = shock
They had also learned that they could do
_________________________________________________________
Now when given the chance to escape, they didn’t
The proof experiment
3 groups of dogs
Group 1: put in ___________________ of their shock
Had to _____________________________________ to stop the shock
Group 2: the shock would go on and off when group 1 pushed the lever, but nothing these
dogs did mattered
These dogs were shocked the same amount as group 1, just had no control
Group 3: not ___________________ at all
Move the animals to a shuttle box
Group 1 and 3: quickly learns to ___________________ ___________________ the barrier
and escape the shock
Group 2: just sits there and doesn’t look for a way to ___________________ the shock
Other ways to explain this observation?
Behaviorism
Movement in Psychology that every behavior and action comes down to whether it
was ______________________________________
Saying that the dog didn’t move because they learned they couldn’t escape goes
against behaviorism
Behaviorists believed that the dogs had ___________________
___________________ and eventually the shock would be turned off
The removal of the shock rewarded the dogs not moving
Experiment 2: To examine the behaviorists hypothesis
Just like the first experiment, except that instead of having a button to push to get rid of the
shock, the dog had to ___________________ for 5 seconds to get rid of the shock (group 1)
Group 2: nothing they did mattered
Group 3: no shock
Predictions
One would predict that if the behaviorists were right, the group 1 dogs would just sit and not
move
However, they quickly adjusted to the new situation and ___________________
___________________ the barrier
Group 2 ______________________________________
Group 3 jumped to avoid the shock
No behaviorist explanation for these observations
So, how does learned helplessness relate to mood?
More likely to lead to ___________________ ___________________ like depression
Other explanations for depression
Possibly ___________________
Asserts that depression is a chemical imbalance
Seligman admits that in some depressed patients, this is the explanation
How do we explain that depression rates have increased from
______________________________________ over the last century?
Have our brains changed biochemically this much?
Is Depression explained by learned helplessness?
Other explanations
Learned helplessness is could be just a ___________________ of depression
It caused depressed ___________________ in otherwise healthy patients
Who is most likely to exhibit learned helplessness?
Pessimists
So…. ___________________ is linked to learned helplessness and depression
Does it cause depression?
Correlation does not equal causation
As depression increases, pessimism does
As pessimism increases, depression does
There are many other explanations for this relationship
Maybe depression causes ___________________
Maybe a biochemical imbalance causes both pessimism and
depression
Evidence in support of pessimism causing depression
Show that, after a tragedy, pessimists are more likely to be ___________________ than
optimists
Classroom experiment
Average student in class said a ___________________ would be a failure
Average grade was a C, so many would fail
Tested students at the beginning of class for ___________________ and for
___________________
After midterm grades came back, they tested for depression
___________________ of the people that were both pessimists and failed the exam
got depressed
Only ___________________ of the entire class got depressed, so there was a much
higher proportion of depressed ___________________ than depressed
___________________
Longitudinal study
Followed children from 3rd grade on
Classified them as pessimist or optimist
Those that were pessimists were most likely to get ___________________ and
___________________ ___________________
Optimists either didn’t get ___________________ or recovered
___________________ from the depression
So pessimism is not good…
How do we become pessimists or optimists?
One line of research indicates that we ___________________ focus on the positive in many
areas of thought
The ______________________________________
The PP: Stimulus selection
People seek out ___________________ ___________________ and actively avoid
___________________ ___________________
Had subjects view series of figures- they controlled the duration of viewing for each
figure
Spent more time looking at those they ___________________ vs those they
___________________
When viewing threatening pictures (measured by GSR), people are likely to avert
their eyes and stare at the background and not the threatening figure itself
The PP: Perception of value
The perceived size of something varies with its ___________________
Had people adjust a spot of light until it was the same size as various coins or as
various grey discs
Coins were estimated as ___________________ than the discs (even though they
were the same size)
The larger the value of the coin, the greater the discrepancy between the coin and the
disc measurement
How many $1 bills equals the weight of a silver dollar?
___________________ was the mean
How many $10 bills equals the weight of a silver dollar?
___________________ was the mean
The more a bill is ___________________ the heavier it is seen
The PP: Holiday value
As a holiday gets nearer, its perceived value increases (more reinforcement closer to the date)
Drawings of ______________________________________ closer to Christmas
Same with Christmas trees
Easter baskets are ___________________ at Easter
___________________ get smaller at Halloween
Maybe to make them go away?
The PP: Self Portraits and Friends
Manipulate children’s self-esteem
Those with higher self-esteem draw ______________________________________
than those with lower self-esteem
Children also draw people they liked larger than those they disliked
Adults remember politicians they liked as taller compared to their opponents
The PP: Perceptual defense
Words that are negative take longer to recognize than words than are neutral or positive
Highly variable
The PP: Response suppression
When asked information about negative words or items, people are sometimes slower or
would rather not respond with the ______________________________________
“speak no evil”
The PP: Language
Avoidance of ______________________________________
Response suppression
The ______________________________________ (Tesser and Rosen, 1975)
More people will tell others good news than bad news
Even the existence of good or bad news
Someone calls and leaves a message for someone else saying to call
for either good or bad news
___________________ of good news people tell them that they should
call and indicate that it is for good news
Only ___________________ of bad news people tell them to call
indicate that it is for bad news
Ways to discuss death
___________________ of actually saying “death”
The PP: Exceptions to “speak no evil”
The news
May operate more on the “______________________________________”
The idea that more intense items are processed more quickly than less intense
items
The PP: Words themselves are skewed positively
Frequency of use skews ___________________
Both in casual and formal use
More ___________________ ___________________ about good things than bad
True across most languages
German, French, Spanish, Chinese, Urdu, Russian
True regardless of whether written or spoken
No difference across ___________________
The PP: Language continued
___________________ words
Typically the positive words is negated
Something is usually described as wrong or “___________________”
You don’t see “not wrong” very often
Historically speaking, good words were typically used before the bad ones
The PP: Word associations
Neutral words typically lead to people thinking ___________________________________
Across many languages
______________________________________ evoke more associated words than negative
words do
Unpleasant words take longer to associate/come up with than pleasant words
The PP: ___________________ order
When asked to list off items of a particular group, people list off the ones they like most
before the ones they dislike
High school students listing off friends list the ones they like most first
Sentences in a paragraph
The earlier sentences were typically more ___________________ than the later ones
Although the later ones were typically more positive than the middle ones
The PP: Learning and memory
Recall of pleasant events after a vacation is much ___________________ than unpleasant
events
Recall of pleasant words in a list is ___________________ than unpleasant words in the list
one week after exposure
Immediately after exposure, no difference was found- it takes time for the
___________________ to occur
Recall of pleasant pairs is better than neutral or unpleasant pairs
The PP: Thought
Subjects can classify words as good or bad faster than neutral
Also can ___________________ good words as good faster than bad words as bad
It is faster to understand sentences that ___________________ than those that negate
The plus is above the star
The plus is not above the star
It is faster to verify the first than the second
People think about ___________________ ___________________ things than unpleasant
things
Think about the pleasant things longer as well
The PP: Happiness
Average people believe they are ______________________________________
Even the survey choices for a happiness scale indicates Pollyannaism
Very happy, happy, not too happy
Most people believe that things are ___________________ for them from past to future
Across most racial groups
The PP: Self-perceptions
More likely to see the self as ___________________ (69% labeled their self-image as
positive, only 13% labeled it as negative)
Compared to others in the class, rate yourself on:
Popularity, strength, ___________________, sense of humor…
13 items total- people viewed themselves as _________________________________
for all 13 items
The PP: Perceptions of others
Average student is better than ___________________
If C is supposed to be average, why is it not the average grade?
Average instructor is better than ___________________
Rate my professor lists RH instructors as a 3.5 average score- 3 is supposed to be
average- Are we really just THAT good here?
Even politicians are more likely to be viewed as better than most
Although the research to support this is old and given political trends and party
extremism that has emerged recently, this might not be true anymore
People in general are viewed as generally ___________________
______________________________________ are viewed as better than average
The PP: Selective attention to the negative
When something bad ___________________ or has the ___________________ to happen,
our consciousness gets directed to it
Evolution has selected for people with these attributes
They will survive more than others
The default to the positive plays out on a ___________________ level according to the PP