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Optimism

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences

  • 123 Accesses

Synonyms

Assurance; Cheer; Elation; Happiness; Hopefulness; Overconfidence; Positive expectations; Positive explanatory style; Positive thinking; Rose-colored glasses; Sanguinity; Trust

Definition and Conceptualization

Optimism describes a positive orientation toward the future. Optimists are people who have the habitual tendency to expect positive future outcomes even when difficulties arise (Scheier and Carver 1992).

Introduction

Part of being optimistic is keeping one’s head pointed toward the sun,

one’s feet moving forward.

Nelson Mandela

Although the roots of a positive mindset and its consequences have been a topic of philosophical discussion for centuries, the empirical study of optimism began with Scheier and Carver’s (1985) seminal work on outcome expectancies. Optimism has been understood as “the extent to which people hold generalized favorable expectancies for their future” (Carver et al. 2010, p. 879). A host of studies have demonstrated that optimism is associated with...

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Bamberg, Bamberg, Germany

    Astrid Schütz, Marina Schall & Selda Koydemir

Authors
  1. Astrid Schütz
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  2. Marina Schall
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  3. Selda Koydemir
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Astrid Schütz .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Oakland University, Rochester, USA

    Virgil Zeigler-Hill

  2. Oakland University, Rochester, USA

    Todd K. Shackelford

Section Editor information

  1. Department of Psychology, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC, USA

    John F. Rauthmann

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Schütz, A., Schall, M., Koydemir, S. (2018). Optimism. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_706-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_706-1

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-28099-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-28099-8

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