Seligman defines optimism in terms of how people explain to
\nthemselves their successes and failures. People who are optimistic see
\na failure as due to something that can be changed so that they can
\nsucceed next time around, while pessimists take the blame for failure,
\nascribing it to some lasting characteristic they are helpless to change.
\nThese differing explanations have profound implications for how
\npeople respond to life. For example, in reaction to a disappointment
\nsuch as being turned down for a job, optimists tend to respond
\nactively and hopefully, by formulating a plan of action, say, or
\nseeking out help and advice; they see the setback as something that
\ncan be remedied. Pessimists, by contrast, react to such setbacks by
\nassuming there is nothing they can do to make things go better the
\nnext time, and so do nothing about the problem; they see the setback
\nas due to some personal deficit that will always plague them.
\nAs with hope, optimism predicts academic success. In a study of five
\nhundred members of the incoming freshman class of 1984 at the
\nUniversity of Pennsylvania, the students\u2019 scores on a test of optimism
\nwere a better predictor of their actual grades freshman year than were
\ntheir SAT scores or their high-school grades. Said Seligman, who
\nstudied them, \u201cCollege entrance exams measure talent, while
\nexplanatory style tells you who gives up. It is the combination of
\nreasonable talent and the ability to keep going in the face of defeat
\nthat leads to success. What\u2019s missing in tests of ability is motivation.
\nWhat you need to know about someone is whether they will keep
\ngoing when things get frustrating. My hunch is that for a given level
\nof intelligence, your actual achievement is a function not just of
\ntalent, but also of the capacity to stand defeat.\u201d23
\nOne of the most telling demonstrations of the power of optimism to
\nmotivate people is a study Seligman did of insurance salesmen with
\nthe MetLife company. Being able to take a rejection with grace is
\nessential in sales of all kinds, especially with a product like insurance,
\nwhere the ratio of noes to yeses can be so discouragingly high. For
\nthis reason, about three quarters of insurance salesmen quit in their
\nfirst three years. Seligman found that new salesmen who were by
\nnature optimists sold 37 percent more insurance in their first two
\nyears on the job than did pessimists. And during the first year the
\npessimists quit at twice the rate of the optimists.
\nWhat\u2019s more, Seligman persuaded MetLife to hire a special group of
\napplicants who scored high on a test for optimism but failed the
\nnormal screening tests (which compared a range of their attitudes to a
\nstandard profile based on answers from agents who have been
\nsuccessful). This special group outsold the pessimists by 21 percent in
\ntheir first year, and 57 percent in the second.
\nJust why optimism makes such a difference in sales success speaks
\nto the sense in which it is an emotionally intelligent attitude. Each no
\na salesperson gets is a small defeat. The emotional reaction to that
\ndefeat is crucial to the ability to marshal enough motivation to
\ncontinue. As the noes mount up, morale can deteriorate, making it
\nharder and harder to pick up the phone for the next call. Such
\nrejection is especially hard to take for a pessimist, who interprets it as
\nmeaning, \u201cI\u2019m a failure at this; I\u2019ll never make a sale\u201d\u2014an
\ninterpretation that is sure to trigger apathy and defeatism, if not
\ndepression. Optimists, on the other hand, tell themselves, \u201cI\u2019m using
\nthe wrong approach,\u201d or \u201cThat last person was just in a bad mood.\u201d
\nBy seeing not themselves but something in the situation as the reason
\nfor their failure, they can change their approach in the next call.
\nWhile the pessimist\u2019s mental set leads to despair, the optimist\u2019s
\nspawns hope.
\nOne source of a positive or negative outlook may well be inborn
\ntemperament; some people by nature tend one way or the other. But
\nas we shall also see in Chapter 14, temperament can be tempered by
\nexperience. Optimism and hope\u2014like helplessness and despair\u2014can
\nbe learned. Underlying both is an outlook psychologists call selfefficacy, the belief that one has mastery over the events of one\u2019s life
\nand can meet challenges as they come up. Developing a competency
\nof any kind strengthens the sense of self-efficacy, making a person
\nmore willing to take risks and seek out more demanding challenges.
\nAnd surmounting those challenges in turn increases the sense of selfefficacy. This attitude makes people more likely to make the best use
\nof whatever skills they may have\u2014or to do what it takes to develop
\nthem.
\nAlbert Bandura, a Stanford psychologist who has done much of the
\nresearch on self-efficacy, sums it up well: \u201cPeople\u2019s beliefs about their
\nabilities have a profound effect on those abilities. Ability is not a fixed
\nproperty; there is a huge variability in how you perform. People who
\nhave a sense of self-efficacy bounce back from failures; they approach
\nthings in terms of how to handle them rather than worrying about
\nwhat can go wrong.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE<\/strong><\/em> Seligman defines optimism in terms of how people explain to themselves their successes and failures. 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People who are optimistic see a failure as due to something that can be changed so that they can succeed next time around, while pessimists take the blame for failure,...","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lecturesbureau.gr\/1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42552"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lecturesbureau.gr\/1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lecturesbureau.gr\/1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lecturesbureau.gr\/1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lecturesbureau.gr\/1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42552"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lecturesbureau.gr\/1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42552\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42553,"href":"https:\/\/www.lecturesbureau.gr\/1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42552\/revisions\/42553"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lecturesbureau.gr\/1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lecturesbureau.gr\/1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lecturesbureau.gr\/1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lecturesbureau.gr\/1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nDANIEL GOLEMAN<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"