Are pessimists actually depressed/ sad, or is that just how we as a society view them. By: Jess Tylor

Optimism  The standard dictionary definition of optimism is having hopefulness and confidence about the future or the successful outcome of something.

Pessimism  The standard dictionary definition of pessimism is a state of mind where someone anticipates undesirable outcomes or believes that the evil or hardships in life outweigh the good or luxuries.

Realism  There are also realists, which in a way are like pessimistic people. They don't expect bad things, but they don't expect good things either. They use facts as a way to see the world, and they don't really hope for good things to happen in the future. They base a lot off of things that have happened in the past, and they use that as a way to predict things that will happen, which leads to thinking that things won't turn out in a good way. A common way to describe realists is they see things for what they are, not how people wish things were.

 There is a group that compared twins that either grew up together or were adopted separately at a very young age. They found that how they were raised had a big impact on them being optimists, but not pessimists. I found this very interesting, and I started to wonder if being an optimist was more of a natural feeling or thing to have than pessimism. Study about Twins

Other Notes  Many people claim to be one or the other, and usually claim to be an optimist. This is because of the negative stigma about being a pessimist.  Although there isn’t any real proof of exactly what a pessimist or an optimist are, people speculate, which has led to many wrong assumptions.  However, they have proved that there are many positives to being some of both.  A lot of what people say is affected by how they personally see the world, and also by how they have experienced it.  Studies have shown that pessimists and optimists both motivate themselves in their own way.  Other studies have noted that when they gave a ‘pessimist’ and an ‘optimist’ the same problem/ test to solve, they both did equally well on it, just by thinking in their own way.

Stereotype

Conclusion  So far, through the research that I’ve done, I personally don’t believe that optimists are necessarily happy people, and pessimists are negative, unhappy people. I think that posters like the ones I just showed help to create a negative view on certain people, even though many people are equally pessimistic and optimistic. I feel like as a society, we label everyone we can, even though we don’t know them or their story. I think that if people spent more time looking at what pessimism and optimism really are on a psychological scale, many peoples views would change.

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