Martin Seligman, author of "Learned Optimism" makes an interesting comparison between optimism and pessimism below:
Martin Seligman: Well let me take the larger issue that I think underlies the question. Those of you who have read ‘Learned Optimism’ from part of what I’ve said tonight, probably think that I’m an advocate of optimism. I’m not. There’s a cost benefit analysis about optimism, and let me go through the cost benefit analysis with you now. There seem to be three benefits of optimism which I talked about one of them tonight. The first is it’s apt to make your life noticeably less depressed, it fights depression. The second benefit of optimism, second benefit of learning disputation, learning cognitive therapy, learning optimism, is that it increases your achievement, so if you look at grade point average, or performance on the sports field, or how many insurance policies people sell, what you find is that optimistic people do better than they’re predicted to do, and pessimistic people achieve less. And the third benefit of optimism is physical health. There’s good reason to believe that the immune system among optimistic people is perkier than among pessimists. The rate of infectious illness is lower among optimists, the probability of death from second heart attack is markedly lower among optimists. So it gives you three things.
But there’s one thing that pessimists do better than optimists. I tried to brush this under the rug for years, it doesn’t brush under the rug. And it’s that pessimists know the score. Pessimists are more realistic than optimists, they know when there’s danger there. There’s a large number of experiments which show that pessimists are more accurate than optimists about how much control they have, that they are more accurate in their memories about success and failure, that their belief systems are generally more accurate. So three benefits of optimism, one benefit of pessimism. What kind of sense do we make of that?
The entire article can be found <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/lm/stories/s648530.htm">here</a>.
Comments?