In one of my weekly addresses to the school a few weeks ago, I spoke about the importance of an optimistic ‘explanatory style’.

At the time I said I would put some information up about how to test if you are an optimist or a pessimist. Here it is. Before starting, however, I would say that there is no substitute for reading Seligman’s book. I have a copy if you like, or you might want to buy a copy yourself. I would recommend it highly. There is also plenty of information there for parents who might feel that their child has a pessimistic explanatory style which may be holding them back.

Firstly, Seligman’s test. Here’s the link:

http://www.stanford.edu/class/msande271/onlinetools/LearnedOpt.html

If you are interested in doing the test, I suggest you complete it BEFORE reading on. Understanding how the tests work will skew your responses.

Interpreting the results

Once you’ve done the test, you need to be able to interpret it. The following is taken from Seligman’s book, “Learned Optimism”, though I have adapted it a little so that it makes sense here.

“Who Never Gives Up?

How do you think about the causes of the misfortunes, small and large, that befall you?

Some people, the ones who give up easily, habitually say of their misfortunes: “It’s me, it’s going to last forever, it’s going to undermine everything I do.” Others, those who resist giving in to misfortune, say: “It was just circumstances, it’s going away quickly anyway, and, besides, there’s much more in life.”

Your habitual way of explaining bad events, your explanatory style, is more than just the words you mouth when you fail. It is a habit of thought, learned in childhood and adolescence. Your explanatory style stems directly from your view of your place in the world - whether you think you are valuable and deserving, or worthless and hopeless. It is the hallmark of whether you are an optimist or a pessimist.

The test you took online is designed to reveal your explanatory style.

There are three crucial dimensions to your explanatory style: permanence, pervasiveness, and personalisation.

PERMANENCE

People who give up easily believe the causes of the bad events that happen to them are permanent: The bad events will persist, will always be there to affect their lives. People who resist helplessness believe the causes of bad events are temporary.

Permanent (Pessimistic): Temporary (Optimistic):

“I’m all washed up.” “I’m exhausted.”

“Diets never work.” “Diets don’t work when you eat out.”

“You always nag.” “You nag when I don’t clean my room.”

“The boss is a psychopath.” “The boss is in a bad mood.”

“You never talk to me.” “You haven’t talked to me lately.”

If you think about bad things in always’s and never’s and abiding traits, you have a permanent, pessimistic style. If you think in sometimes’s and lately’s, if you use qualifiers and blame bad events on transient conditions, you have an optimistic style.

Now turn back to your test. Look at your “Permanent Bad” score. Some of the questions you answered were there to test how permanent you tend to think the causes of bad events are. Each one with a 0 after it is optimistic. Each one followed by a 1 is pessimistic. So, for example, if you chose “I’m not good a remembering birthdays” (question 5) rather than “I was preoccupied with other things” to explain why you forgot your spouse’s birthday, you chose a more permanent, and therefore pessimistic, cause.

If you totalled 0 or 1, you are very optimistic on this dimension;

2 or 3 is a moderately optimistic score;

4 is average;

5 or 6 is quite pessimistic; and

If you scored 7 or 8, you will find Part Three of Seligman’s book, “Changing: From Pessimism to Optimism”, very helpful.

Here’s why the permanence dimension matters so much - and here is our answer to John Teasdale’s challenge about why some people stay helpless forever while others bounce back right away.

Failure makes everyone at least momentarily helpless. It’s like a punch in the stomach. It hurts, but the hurt goes away - for some people almost instantly. These are the people whose score totals o or I. For others, the hurt lasts; it seethes, it roils, it congeals into a grudge. These people score 7 or 8. They remain helpless for days or perhaps months, even after only small setbacks. After major defeats they may never come back.

The optimistic style of explaining good events is just the opposite of the optimistic style of explaining bad events. People who believe good events have permanent causes are more optimistic than people who believe they have temporary causes.

Temporary (Pessimistic): Permanent (Optimistic):

“It’s my lucky day.” “I’m always lucky.

“I try hard.” “I’m talented.”

“My rival got tired.” “My rival is no good.”

Optimistic people explain good events to themselves in terms of permanent causes: traits, abilities, always’s. Pessimists name transient causes: moods, effort, sometimes’s.

You probably noticed that some of the questions on the test (exactly half of them, in fact) were about good events; for example, “Your stocks make you a lot of money”.

Look at your “Permanent Good” score. If your total is 7 or 8, you are very optimistic about the likelihood of good events continuing;

6 is a moderately optimistic score;

4 or 5 is average;

3 is moderately pessimistic; and

0, 1 or 2 is very pessimistic.

People who believe good events have permanent causes try even harder after they succeed. People who see temporary reasons for good events may give up even when they succeed, believing success was a fluke.

PERVASIVENESS: Specific vs. Universal

Permanence is about time. Pervasiveness is about space.

Consider this example: In a large retailing firm, half the accounting department was fired. Two of the fired accountants, Nora and Kevin, both became depressed. Neither could bear to look for another job for several months, and both avoided doing their income tax or anything else that reminded them of accounting. Nora, however, remained a loving and active wife. Her social life went on normally, her health stayed robust, and she continued to work out three times a week. Kevin, in contrast, fell apart. He ignored his wife and baby son, spending all his evenings in sullen brooding. He refused to go to parties, swaying he couldn’t bear to see people. He never laughed at jokes. He caught a cold that lasted all winter, and he gave up jogging.

Some people can put their troubles neatly into a box and go about their lives even when one important aspect of it - their job, for example, or their love life - is suffering. Others bleed all over everything. They catastrophise. When one thread of their lives snaps, the whole fabric unravels.

It comes down to this: People who make universal explanations for their failures give up on everything when a failure strikes in one area. People who make specific explanations may become helpless in that one part of their lives yet march stalwartly on in the others.

Here are some universal and some specific explanations of bad events:

Universal (Pessimistic) Specific (Optimistic)

“All teachers are unfair.” “Professor Seligman is unfair.”

“I’m repulsive.” “I’m repulsive to him.”

“Books are useless.” “This book is useless.”

Nora and Kevin had the same high score on the permanence dimension of the test. They were both pessimists in this respect. When they were fired, they both remained depressed for a long time. But they had opposite scores on the pervasiveness dimension. Kevin believed the firing would undermine everything he tried; he thought he was no good at anything. Nora believed bad events have very specific causes. When she was fired, she thought she was no good at accounting.

On those long Oxford walks with John Teasdale, we took the paradox he cited - about who gives up and who doesn’t - broke it into three parts, and made three predictions about who gives up and who doesn’t:

The first was that the permanence dimension determines how long a person gives up for. Permanent explanations for bad events produce long-lasting helplessness and temporary explanations produce resilience.

The second prediction was about pervasiveness. Universal explanations produce helplessness across many situations and specific explanations produce helplessness only in the troubles area. Kevin was a victim of the pervasiveness dimension. Once fired he believed the cause was universal, and he behaved as though disaster had struck all aspects of his life. Kevin’s pervasiveness score revealed he was a catastrophiser. The third prediction concerned personalisation and you will read about it shortly.

Do you catastrophise? Did you catastrophise in this test? For example, in answering question 18, did you label the cause of losing as your not being very athletic (universal) or your not being good a that sport (specific)? This is revealed by your “Pervasiveness Bad” score.

A total of 0 or 1 is very optimistic;

2 or 3 is a moderately optimistic score;

4 is average;

5 or 6 is moderately pessimistic; and

7 or 8 is very pessimistic.

Now for the converse. The optimistic explanatory style for good events is opposite that for bad events. The optimist believes that bad events have specific cause, while good events will enhance everything he does; the pessimist believes that bad events have universal causes and that good events are caused by specific factors. When Nora was offered temporary work back at the company, she thought: “They finally realised they can’t get along without me.” When Kevin got the same offer he thought: “They must really be shorthanded.”

Specific (Pessimistic) Universal (Optimistic)

“I’m smart at maths.” “I’m smart.”

“My broker knows oil stocks.” “My broker knows Wall Street.”

“I was charming to her.” “I was charming.”

This is revealed by your “Pervasiveness Good” score.

For instance, when asked in question 35 for your reaction to a friend’s thanks for helping him, did you answer, “I enjoy helping him through tough times” (specific and pessimistic) or “I care about people” (universal and optimistic)?

This is what is measured by your “Pervasiveness Good” score.

A score of 7 or 8 is very optimistic;

6 is a moderately optimistic score;

4 or 5 is average;

3 is moderately pessimistic; and

0, 1, or 2 is very pessimistic.

THE STUFF OF HOPE

Hope has largely been the province of preachers, of politician, and of hucksters. The concept of explanatory style brings hope into the laboratory, where scientists can dissect it in order to understand how it works.

Whether or not we have hope depends on two dimensions of our explanatory style: pervasiveness and permanence. Finding temporary and specific causes for misfortune is the art of hope: Temporary causes limit helplessness in time, and specific causes limit helplessness to the original situation. On the other hand, permanent causes produce helplessness far into the future, and universal causes spread helplessness through all your endeavours. Finding permanent and universal causes for misfortune is the practice of despair.

Hopeless Hopeful

“I’m stupid.” “I’m hung over.”

“Men are tyrants.” “My husband was in a bad mood.”

“It’s five in ten this lump is cancer.” “It’s five in ten this lump is nothing.”

Perhaps the single most important score from your test is your “stuff of hope” score.

If it is 0, 1, or 2, you are extraordinarily hopeful;

3, 4, 5, or 6 is moderately hopeful score;

7 or 8 is average;

9, 10, or 11 is moderately hopeless; and

12, 13, 14, 15, or 16 is severely hopeless.

People who make permanent and universal explanations for their troubles tend to collapse under pressure, both for a long time and across situations.

No other single score is as important as your hope score.

PERSONALISATION: Internal vs. External

There is one final aspect of explanatory style: personalisation.

I once lived with a woman who blamed everything on me. Bad restaurant meals, late flights, even imperfect creases in her dry-cleaned trousers. “Sweetheart,” I said one day, in exasperation after being bawled out because her hair dryer didn’t work, “you are the most external person for bad events I’ve ever met.”

“Yes,” she shouted, “and it’s all your fault!”

When bad things happen, we can blame ourselves (internalise) or we can blame other people or circumstances (externalise). People who blame themselves when they fail have low self-esteem as a consequence. They think they are worthless, talentless, and unlovable. People who blame external events do not lose self-esteem when bad events strike. On the whole, they like themselves better than people who blame themselves do.

Low self-esteem usually comes from an internal style for bad events.

Internal (Low self-esteem) External (High self-esteem)

“I’m stupid.” “You’re stupid.”

“I have no talent at poker.” “I have no luck at poker.”

“I’m insecure.” “I grew up in poverty.”

Take a look at your “Personalisation Bad” scores (the questions are 3, 9, 19, 25, 30, 39, 41, and 47).

A score of 0 or 1 indicates very high self-esteem;

2 or 3 indicates moderate self-esteem;

4 is average;

5 or 6 indicates moderately low self-esteem; and

7 or 8 indicates very low self-esteem.

Of the three dimensions of explanatory style, personalisation is the easiest to understand. After all, one of the first things a child learns to say is “He did it, not me!” Personalisation is also the easiest dimension to overrate. It controls only how you feel about yourself, but pervasiveness and permanence - the more important dimensions - control what you do: how long you are helpless and across how many situations.

Personalisation is the only dimension simple to fake. If I tell you to talk about your troubles in an external way now, you will be able to do it - even if you are a chronic internaliser. You can chatter along, pretending to blame your troubles on others. However, if you are a pessimist and I tell you to talk about your troubles as having temporary and specific cause, you will not be able to do it (unless you have mastered the techniques of Part Three, “Changing: From Pessimism to Optimism”).

Here’s one last piece of information for you, before you get your totals: The optimistic style of explaining good events is the opposite of that used for bad events: It’s internal rather than external. People who believe they cause good things tend to like themselves better than people who believe good things come from other people or circumstances.

External (Pessimistic) Internal (Optimistic)

“A stroke of luck …….” “I can take advantage of luck”

“My teammates’ skill ……” “My skill…….”

Your last score is “Personalisation Good”. The relevant questions are 1, 4, 11, 12, 23, 27, 36, and 45.

A score of 7 or 8 is very optimistic;

6 is moderately optimistic score;

4 or 5 is average;

3 is moderately pessimistic; and

0, 1, or 2 is very pessimistic.

You can now compute your overall scores.

The “Total Bad” score is simply the addition of all three scores about bad events: “Permanence Bad”, “Pervasiveness Bad” and “Personalisation Bad”.

[You don’t need to do this – the computer does it for you!]

The “Total Good” score, similarly, is simply the addition of all three scores about good events: “Permanence Good”, “Pervasiveness Good” and “Personalisation Good”.

[Again, you don’t need to do this – the computer does it for you!]

Your overall optimism score is calculated simply by subtracting one from the other. This is your overall score (G - B).

Here is what your totals mean:

If your B score is from 3 to 6, you are marvellously optimistic about bad events and you won’t be needing the “Changing” chapters;

If it’s in the 6 to 9 range, you’re moderately optimistic;

10 or 11 is about average;

12 to 14 is moderately pessimistic; and

Anything above 14 cries out for change.

If your G score is 19 or above, you think about good events very optimistically;

If it’s from 17 to 19 your thinking is moderately optimistic;

14 to 16 is about average;

11 to 13 indicates that you think quite pessimistically; and

A score of 10 or less indicates great pessimism.

Finally, if your overall (G – B) score is above 8, you are very optimistic across the board;

If it’s from 6 to 8 you’re moderately optimistic;

3 to 5 is average;

1 or 2 is a moderately pessimistic score; and

A score of 0 or below is very pessimistic.

CAVEAT ABOUT RESPONSIBILITY

Although there are clear benefits to learning optimism - there are also dangers. Temporary? Local? That’s fine. I want my depressions to be short and limited. I want to bounce back quickly. But external? Is it right that I should blame others for my failures?

Most assuredly we want people to own up to the messes they make, to be responsible for their actions. Certain psychological doctrines have damaged our society by helping to erode personal responsibility: Evil is mis-labelled insanity; bad manners are shucked off as neurosis; “successfully treated” patients evade their duty to their families because it does not bring them personal fulfilment. The question is whether or not changing beliefs about failure from internal to external (“It’s not my fault ….. it’s bad luck”) will undermine responsibility.

I am unwilling to advocate any strategy that further erodes responsibility. I don’t believe people should change their beliefs from internal to external wholesale. Nevertheless, there is one condition under which this usually should be done: depression. As we will see in the next chapter, depressed people often take much more responsibility for bad events than is warranted.

There is a deeper matter to deal with here: the question of why people should own up to their failures in the first place. The answer, I believe, is that we want people to change, and we know they will not change if they do not assume responsibility. If we want people to change, internality is not as crucial as the permanence dimension is. If you believe the cause of your mess is permanent - stupidity, lack of talent, ugliness - you will not act to change it. You will not act to improve yourself. If, however, you believe the cause is temporary - a bad mood, too little effort, overweight - you can act to change it. If we want people to be responsible for what they do, then yes, we want them to have an internal style. More important, people must have a temporary style for bad events - they must believe that whatever the cause of the bad event, it can be changed.

WHAT IF YOU ARE A PESSIMIST?

It matters a great deal if your explanatory style is pessimistic. If you scored poorly, there are four areas where you will encounter (and probably already have encountered) trouble. First, you are likely to get depressed easily. Second, you are probably achieving less at work than your talents warrant. Third, your physical health - and your immune function - is probably not what they should be, and this may get even worse as you get older. Finally, life is not as pleasurable as it should be. Pessimistic explanatory style is a misery.

If your pessimism score is in the average range, it will not be a problem in ordinary times. But in crisis, in the hard times life deals us all, you will likely pay an unnecessary price. When these events strike, you may find yourself getting more depressed than you should. How are you likely to react when your stocks go down, when you are rejected by someone you love, when you don’t get the job you want? As the next chapter shows, you will become very sad. The zest will go out of living. It will be very hard for you to get started on anything challenging. The future will look bleak to you. And you will be likely to feel this way for weeks or even months. You have probably felt this way several times already; most people have. This is so common that textbooks call it a normal reaction.

The commonness of being knocked flat by troubles, however, does not mean it is acceptable or that life has to be this way. If you use a different explanatory style, you’ll be better equipped to cope with troubled times and keep them from propelling you towards depression.

That hardly exhausts the prospective benefits of a new explanatory style. If you have an average degree of pessimism, you are going through life at a level somewhat lower than your talents would otherwise permit you. Even an average degree of pessimism drags down your performance in school, on the job, and in sports. This is true of physical health as well. Chapter ten illustrates how even if you are just ordinarily pessimistic, your health may not be up to par. You will likely suffer the chronic diseases of aging earlier and more severely than necessary. Your immune system may not work as well as it should; you will probably suffer more infectious diseases and recuperate more slowly.

If you use the techniques of chapter twelve, you will be able to choose to raise your everyday level of optimism. You should find yourself reacting to the normal setbacks of life much more positively and bouncing back from life’s large defeats much more briskly than you did before. You should achieve more on the job, in school, and on the playing field. An in the long run, even your body should serve you better.”

For more information, please consult Martin Seligman’s book.