It can also be a sign that you are feeling content with your current situation and that you are looking forward to the future with enthusiasm. It can be interpreted as a sign that you are looking forward to a brighter future and that you are expecting good things to come. If we can do this, I am cautiously optimistic that we can protect ourselves and others while bringing positivity and hope to our societies.Dreaming of sunny weather is a sign of optimism and hope. We must dedicate time to weighing up the risks and consequences of our behaviour without being drawn into extended rumination or falling into pessimism. It is important to retain our generalised optimism that we will be able to overcome this challenging time and remain positive as we do so.Īt the same time, we should intentionally seek other perspectives and talk to others about our automatic responses to the pandemic. Optimal optimismįor optimists, the question now is how we can benefit from our tendency towards seeing the upside of life while minimising any risk to ourselves or others. Rather than continually changing the guidelines, sending mixed messages about the level of risk and imposing different rules in different regions, governments should put out explicit and unambiguous regulations that are consistently applied if they want to influence the behaviour of optimists. But as we have seen subsequently, that initial optimism has led a second wave, with many local regions and entire countries heading back into various forms of lockdown. If tight restrictions are eased, as they were over summer in many places, optimists start believing the risk has subsided and the crisis will soon be over. “Stay two metres apart” is better for optimists than giving a range.ĭoes the two-metre rule apply to you? Your answer might depend on whether you’re an optimist. For the messaging to be most useful for optimists, it should be clear and unambiguous. To an optimist, that means that we should stay one metre apart, not the full two. UK guidelines on social distancing, for example, say we should stay two metres apart unless we have a face covering “or other precautions” in place, in which case the distance is reduced to one metre. When rules come with exceptions, we will assume that these exceptions apply to us. In situations where confusion reigns due to constantly changing regulations, we will come to our own conclusions. In ambiguous situations, optimists tend to gravitate towards the most positive interpretation of the rules. But if we want to moderate our optimism, we must set aside time to think about these things and discuss our ideas with others. To what extent are the current restrictions about me versus other people? How long is the pandemic likely to be with us? To what extent is COVID-19 a local issue?Īs optimists, our natural inclination is not to spend too much time on questions like this. So it would be helpful for us to challenge our thinking. According to the theory of “ optimistic explanatory style”, an optimistic response arises when a person believes that a negative event is external (caused by someone or something else), that it is unstable (not likely to persist over time), and that it is local (only relates to a particular situation). Cozine/ShutterstockĪnother strategy is to compare our predictions to what experts, specialists and commentators are saying. The glass may be half full, but we still need to act like it might be half empty. But how? A good way to check if we are being excessively optimistic is to ask ourselves: what evidence do I have to support my prediction? If there isn’t any basis for our assumption that, for example, we won’t get coronavirus by entering a closed, crowded space for a long time, we should think about changing our behaviour. Optimists need to rein themselves in a bit during this crisis. By doing this we are putting ourselves and others at risk. Even when we catch the virus, we’re more likely to believe that it is “just a cold” and so more likely to continue going about our daily routines. We also might be less cautious when walking into crowded spaces and less motivated to obey restrictions. We might misjudge our vulnerability to COVID-19, believing without justification that we are less likely to catch it. What is normally a strength of optimists (risk taking) becomes a dangerous weakness.īecause we believe that things will work out well even where there is little evidence to support this perspective, we tend to minimise risks, underestimate costs and ignore warning signs. In situations where danger is present, excessive optimism (sometimes called irrational or unrealistic optimism) can have severe negative consequences. MRacheron/Shutterstock The dark side of optimism Looking on the bright side has its down sides.
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