Learned optimism

Learned optimism is the idea in positive psychology that a talent for joy, like any other, can be cultivated. It is contrasted with learned helplessness. Learning optimism is done by consciously challenging any negative self talk.

Learned optimism was defined by Martin Seligman and published in his 1990 book, Learned Optimism. The benefits of an optimistic outlook are many: Optimists are higher achievers and have better overall health. Pessimism, on the other hand, is much more common; pessimists are more likely to give up in the face of adversity or to suffer from depression. Seligman invites pessimists to learn to be optimists by thinking about their reactions to adversity in a new way. The resulting optimism—one that grew from pessimism—is a learned optimism. The optimist's outlook on failure can thus be summarized as "What happened was an unlucky situation (not personal), and really just a setback (not permanent) for this one, of many, goals (not pervasive)".

Other differences exist between pessimists and optimists in terms of explanatory style:

Martin Seligman's learned optimism now orients the U.S. armed services' psychological stance. Keith Ablow blamed this in part for the actions of the U.S. soldier accused of killing 16 civilians in Afghanistan. He wrote that soldiers are "taught to deny stress and trauma, and false bravado is actually encouraged, under the banner of 'resilience.' It's a bad, bad idea that pushes soldiers to 'fake good' until they fall apart. And, then, the system continues to withhold needed care, particularly of a psychotherapeutic, insight-oriented variety."

Seligman came to the concept of learned optimism through a scientific study of learned helplessness, the idea that a certain reoccurring negative event is out of the person's control. As he was performing tests to study helplessness further, he began to wonder why some people resisted helplessness-conditioning. He noticed that, while some subjects blamed themselves for negative outcomes, others blamed the experiment for setting them up to fail.

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