Learned Optimism

The book's author has been described as America's most influential psychologist. Throughout the book, he devotes considerable space to establishing his credentials, showing how he made his discoveries and explaining why they're scientifically valid. These passages slow the book down somewhat for readers looking for concrete, practical tips. But, like an engaging subplot in a novel, they also move us briskly enough through the author's interesting path of discovery as a social scientist. And they establish that "Learned Optimism" isn't just the latest self-help bestseller. Rather, it's a serious, accessible work of psychology, grounded in empirical fact that also happens to pack a powerful self-help punch.

In the first of the book's three major sections, the author establishes the main tenets of his theory. In a nutshell, it goes like this: Optimistic people tend to be happier, healthier, and more successful than pessimists – and pessimists can become optimistic by consciously changing the way they think. Specifically, pessimists have to work on the way they explain their failures – and even their successes – to themselves.

The author got the germ of his idea as a young graduate student visiting a university research lab. There, researchers were studying the cognitive skills of dogs. The researchers subjected the dogs to a high-pitched noise followed by a mild electrical shock. The idea was to teach the dogs to associate the noise with the shock, and then see if they could be taught to react to the noise as they would to the shock. So after days of noise-shock, noise-shock, the researchers placed each dog in a small room divided into two compartments by a low wall. The researchers hoped that by applying the noise without the shock, the dogs would be moved to jump over the wall to flee the shock.

Instead, on hearing the noise, the dogs tended to collapse to the floor, whimpering. The behavior confused the researchers, but the author thought he had the explanation: The dogs had learned to be helpless. During the period when the researchers were teaching the dogs to associate the noise with the shock, the dogs got the shock no matter what their reaction. They could jump, growl, or bark, but no matter what they did, the shock came.

They learned that when it came to high-pitched noises, their actions gave them no control over events. So when they entered the rooms with the low walls, the noise didn't inspire them to decisive action, like jumping over the wall. Instead, it drove them to collapse in frustration, resigned to experiencing an unpleasant shock – even though it didn't come.

From this observation, the 21-year-old graduate student set off on the path that would lead him to discover the link between people's optimism level and their experience in life.

The author calls what the dogs experienced "learned helplessness," which is another way of saying pessimism. The pessimist, like the dogs in the experiment, feels like his own actions have no bearing on his wellbeing. Confronted with a setback – a rejection from a love interest, or the loss of a job – the pessimist essentially collapses to the floor and whimpers, like the dogs in the lab. Nothing I do matters, the pessimist tells himself, so I might as well resign myself to being single, or settle for a job that's beneath my skill and experience level.

In its extreme form, pessimism can lead to clinical depression – a topic the author dwells on at some length in the first section.

But the key here, according to the author, is "explanatory style" – the way we explain things to ourselves. Explanatory style largely determines whether we're fundamentally optimistic or pessimistic. Of course, everyone has elements of both qualities, but usually one or the other dominates a person's outlook. To help readers determine their status as optimists or pessimists, the author includes a written test in the book, which determines explanatory style based on three elements: permanence, pervasiveness, and personalization.

The book's test is quite detailed, and very much worth taking for a precise gage of your optimist/pessimist profile. But it's possible to give its flavor

here with a few examples that, if you apply them to yourself, will give you an idea of whether your explanatory style tends to be optimistic or pessimistic.

The first dimension of explanatory style – permanence – works like this. Say you get home from a long day's work and feel too exhausted to exercise. Here's a classic pessimistic response: "I must be getting old. Since I'm too tired to exercise, I guess I'll have to accept that I'll get fat." That response takes a state – exhaustion – and turns it into a permanent condition. In this attitude, action can have no impact – exhaustion after a long day's work is permanent, and the exercise program is likely out the window.

Now consider this response: "I overworked myself today and now I'm too tired to exercise. So I'll go to bed early, rest up, and have a go at it tomorrow." In this case, the explanation is temporary rather than permanent – a day of overwork – and the exercise program is very much alive.

The second dimension of explanatory style is pervasiveness. It operates like this. Imagine you're a student sitting quietly in a full classroom as the teacher lectures. Suddenly, an inappropriate noise emerges from somewhere near you – and the teacher falsely accuses you of being the cause. One response would be, "teachers are unfair." That pervasive explanation might lead you to withdraw in school, to stop trying very hard. Why apply yourself? If all teachers are unfair, it doesn't really matter if you apply yourself or not.

But consider how different things would be if you told yourself this: "This teacher is unfair – and he's probably in a bad mood today." Instead of seeing the problem as pervasive – all teachers are unfair – this view localizes the problem. Although this teacher is unfair, and is probably unusually unfair now, most teachers are fair, so it makes sense to continue trying hard in school.

The third and final dimension is personalization. This is probably the most fundamental element of explanatory style. Here's how it works. You complete a report for a supervisor following his instructions precisely. On reviewing it, the supervisor becomes visibly frustrated.

It turns out that the report lacks key elements – things the supervisor had failed to tell you. One response would be to personalize the situation as follows: "My boss was counting on me, and I let him down. I'm unreliable and incompetent." With that reaction, you're probably not going to work with much confidence next time you get an important assignment.

Now consider a more optimistic approach – one that resists personalizing the setback. You tell yourself, "It's awful to see my supervisor so frustrated, but there's not much I could have done, since he failed to communicate the full assignment." With that attitude, you open the possibility of having a tactful conversation with your boss – with the chance of protecting your reputation by pointing out that you fulfilled the assignment as well as could be expected. And next time you get an assignment, you're likely be even more inspired to get it done right the first time, to show that the previous failure was an exception, not a trend.

Here's an interesting twist: Each of the three elements should be reversed when applied to positive events. The optimist will find all sorts of permanent, pervasive, and personal qualities in good news – just the opposite of his approach to bad tidings. When he's awarded a bonus at work, he might say to himself, "As usual, my talent has been recognized, at work as in other parts of my life." A pessimist will turn it around and make it all about external forces: "What a stroke of luck! The company was having a good year, and anyway, I'm sure other people's bonuses were bigger than mine."

It's important to note that while the author finds optimism a key trait in achieving happiness, he doesn't view it through a completely uncritical lens. Throughout the book's first section, he acknowledges that in its extreme form, optimism can amount to excuse-making.

Some failures are personal, like when you lose a job because of some unethical act. And some situations really are hopeless. As the author wryly notes, "Optimism won't do much for you if you've been hit by a ... truck." What he advocates is a kind of clear-eyed optimism: The ability to at least consider hopeful explanations for setbacks, and to gain confidence from triumphs.

In the next section, the author shows how his ideas about optimism have been applied in various realms of life: Workplace, child rearing, school, sports, health, and politics. These fascinating sections demonstrate the worth of his ideas. For example, the author tells the story of how the CEO of a leading insurance company consulted him to find out why the sales team had such a high staff turnover.

After giving personality tests to several randomly selected sales associates, the author found a consistent result. Associates who showed high optimism tended to outperform their pessimistic peers by a wide margin – and they also tended to stick around with the company longer and move up the ranks. It turns out that successfully selling insurance requires high levels of optimism. Even the best associates only manage to sell policies to just one prospect in ten; and many prospects are outright rude in their rejection. In such a field, anyone with an ounce of pessimism is bound to get discouraged and give up. Optimists become high-value commodities.

Following this discovery, the author helped the insurance company to devise a personality test to steer optimists into the sales force, and pessimists into some other line of work. He also taught the company ways of helping sales team members become more optimistic – a topic he approaches in the book's third section, which you'll hear about in a moment.

But before we go into that, the author adds an interesting note to his discussion of optimism in the workplace. He acknowledges that it's more important for some jobs than for others. As he found out, you want your sales and marketing people to see the world through rose-tinted glasses. A company's CEO, too, should have a visionary streak, and see opportunity where pessimists only see danger. But what about jobs like chief financial officer and safety inspector? These posts call for a dash of caution, a sense of danger being always around the corner – in short, a healthy dose of pessimism.

But even here, pessimism must be held in check. You want your CFO to take a starkly realistic view of company finances, but you also need him or her to be able to get out of bed in the morning. As you heard earlier, unchecked pessimism can lead to severe depression and, according to the author, it can also wreak havoc on physical health.

The author reports on several studies he and his colleagues conducted over the years linking health and optimism levels. Over and over again, they found links, and published the results in peer-reviewed journal articles. For example, they gave personality tests to old people in retirement homes, and then adjusted the results for age and illness. Again and again, people with optimistic outlooks lived longer than their more gloomy peers.

In the book's most tantalizing moment, the author reports on the early stages of a study of patients suffering from severe forms of cancer. All the patients received chemotherapy and radiation treatment as normal, but half of them got training from the author and his colleagues on how to fight severe pessimism.

He reports that the early results are quite promising – the half that got therapy showed dramatic initial increases in their immune response to cancer, while the control group showed no change. At the time that he was writing, it was too early to tell if the increased immune activity led to remission of the cancer.

And here's where the book lets us down. We're told that the study began in nineteen-eighty-nine, not long before the book's first publication. Yet the latest edition, which came out in two-thousand-and-six, offers no update – even though it goes on telling the story as if the study were still in its early stages.

That quibble aside, the author certainly presents compelling, science-based evidence that improving your outlook can improve your health. How, then, to go about improving your outlook? Well, this is precisely the topic of the book's third and final section. Here's where we find out how to gain "learned optimism," the promise embedded in the book's title.

In essence, the author's advice goes like this: Watch carefully how you explain events to yourself – and, when you take an overly dim view of things, develop the habit of challenging your pessimism.

The method starts with a self-analysis technique the author calls ABC, for adversity, belief, and consequence. Here's how ABC analysis works.

Something adverse happens – that's "A". Think immediately about how you interpret it – that's "B," for belief. Now, what sort of action or outcome did that belief trigger? That would be "C," or consequence.

Here's an example from the book. Say a close friend doesn't immediately return your call. If you tend toward pessimism, you might believe that she's mad at you for some reason – that you've let her down somehow. The consequence might be a bad mood for the rest of the day.

The author suggests that people trying to boost their optimism write down four or five ABC scenarios over the course of a day or two. From there, he suggests adding a fourth letter to the ABC exercise: "D" for disputation. Under each scenario you've come up with, objectively dispute any negative beliefs, using the full range of information available to you – not just the negative stuff.

Sure, it's possible that your friend didn't call you back because she was angry. But didn't she mention recently that she had been working overtime a lot? Rather than being angry, might she simply be ... busy?

With this belief replacing the old one, yesterday's bad mood becomes today's sympathetic feelings for your hard-working friend. Once a pessimist learns to identify the negative beliefs that consistently give his experiences a dark tint, the act of disputing them becomes second nature. Eventually, the pessimist learns to be easier on himself – and morphs into an optimist, even if previously he might never have dared to hope for such a thing.

At the risk of being overly optimistic, it does seem like a wide swath of people could benefit from this book. And we should all pay attention to the author's tip to keep your eyes open for the bit of blue sky peeking out from behind even the darkest clouds.

"Learned Optimism" by Martin EP Seligman is published in paperback by Vintage Books.

That's the end of this episode of Book Insights.