As news approaches, even optimists brace for the worst

By Christian Jarrett Psychologists studying how our expectations change over time have observed that our hopes tend to dip the nearer we get to receiving some feedback, be that an exam result, sports score or health test outcome. They call this “bracing” and there’s evidence we do it more in some situations than others, for example the more severe the potential outcome and the more personally relevant, the more we brace. But do some of us brace more than others, and specifically, do optimists brace as much as pessimists? According to a series of nine studies published recently in the Journal of Personality, the answer is yes. All of Kate Sweeny’s and Angelica Falkenstein’s studies involved tests for signs of bracing and tests of either dispositional optimism (measured by agreement with statements like “In uncertain times, I usually expect the best”) and/or pessimism (measured by agreement with statements like “I spend lots of time imagining what could go wrong”). Two of the most compelling studies involved law students, who were asked to predict their performance on an upcoming bar exam, and then to predict their results one month and one day before the results were due in. Other studies involved psychology undergrads who were asked to forecast how well they thought they’d done on an intelligence test, a maths test, or how attractive they would be rated by other students. Crucially, sometimes they were asked to ma...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Personality Source Type: blogs