BACKGROUND The relationship between defensive pessimism, self-esteem, and achievement goals is a controversial issue. The main contribution of this research is the adoption of a person-centered approach to explore the existence of differentiated profiles of university students, which combine self-esteem and defensive pessimism. In addition, we analyze whether these profiles differ in their achi...

The classic, well-cited study by Marshall et al. (1992) demonstrated that optimism correlates stronger with extraversion than does pessimism and pessimism correlates stronger with neuroticism than does optimism, and these results lent support to their claim that optimism and pessimism are two separate constructs. However, we argued that their results are likely the outcome of scale artefact cau...

OBJECTIVES Dispositional optimism is often considered to be a unidimensional construct. Recent studies suggest, however, that optimism and pessimism are separate dimensions. In this study we investigated two issues. First, the levels of optimism and pessimism in adolescents with cancer compared with healthy controls and second, the individual effects of optimism and pessimism on concurrent and ...

This study reports about the construction of a bidimensional measure of optimism and pessimism (defined as positive and negative outcome expectancies), called the Japanese Optimism and Pessimism Scale (J-OPS), and examines its reliability and validity. The participants were college students. The results revealed the following: (a) the J-OPS had sufficient reliability and validity, (b) optimism ...

a r t i c l e i n f o Optimism and pessimism are cognitive expectancies regarding future events, whereas counterfactual thinking is the cognitive process of imagining alternatives to events that occurred in the past. The purpose of this study was to conceptualize dispositional optimism and pessimism within the context of norm theory and examine relationships between dispositional optimism and p...

OBJECTIVE Previous research has shown that biological (e.g., genetic, biochemical) accounts of depression--currently in ascendancy--are linked to the general public's pessimism about the syndrome's prognosis. This research examined for the first time whether people with depressive symptoms would associate biological accounts of depression with pessimism about their own prognoses and whether a p...