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The term pessimism derives from the Latin word pessimus, meaning 'the worst'.It was first used by Jesuit critics of Voltaire's 1759 novel Candide, ou l'Optimisme.Voltaire was satirizing the philosophy of Leibniz who maintained that this was the 'best (optimum) of all possible worlds'.
An optimist and a pessimist, Vladimir Makovsky, 1893. Researchers operationalize the term "optimism" differently depending on their research. As with any trait characteristic, there are several ways to evaluate optimism, such as the Life Orientation Test (LOT), an eight-item scale developed in 1985 by Michael Scheier and Charles Carver.
The concept of explanatory style encompasses a wide range of possible responses to both positive and negative occurrences, rather than a black-white difference between optimism and pessimism. Also, an individual does not necessarily show a uniform explanatory style in all aspects of life, but may exhibit varying responses to different types of ...
The Facebook cofounder delved into his views on optimism—and just as important, pessimism—on a Monday episode of the Huberman Lab podcast. One of his favorite sayings, he explained, is that ...
WikiMedia Commons. The 2002 book Bringing Down the House told the true story of how six MIT math geniuses mastered blackjack card counting and took Las Vegas for millions. It had money, sex, drugs ...
Pessimism is deeply rooted in our biological makeup. It's also one of the reasons many people don't live up to their potential. It turns out that our brains weren't designed for the modern world.
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.
Josiah Stamp is often given credit for introducing it in a 1935 speech, but although he did help to popularize it, a variant regarding a car's gas tank occurs in print with the optimism/pessimism connotations as early as 1929, and the glass-with-water version is mentioned simply as an intellectual paradox about the quantity of water (without ...