You may be wondering how we can be so sure that it is possible to learn to be an optimist. Paradoxically, the evidence that optimism can be learned stems from studies that show that pessimism can be learned. In experiments conducted by Martin Seligman in the 1960s, dogs were exposed to mild electric shocks from which they could not escape. After trying to evade the shocks without success, the dogs gave up. In the next stage, when the same dogs were given a means of escaping the electric shocks, they did not even begin to try – they had been conditioned to believe that their efforts were useless, a state of mind that Seligman dubbed “learned helplessness”. Seligman (with Donald Hiroto) later conducted a similar experiment using human volunteers. They subjected the people to inescapable noise, then gave them the opportunity to leave. The subjects reacted in the same way as the dogs had – with passive resignation to the situation.
Seligman and his co-researchers drew a parallel between the thought processes of learned helplessness and those that inform a pessimistic explanatory style – “it’s my fault; things will never get better; this will affect everything in my life”. If a person suffers a series of setbacks that he or she feels powerless to prevent, the person may develop learned helplessness, leading to loss of motivation, reduced self-confidence and a pessimistic belief that it does not matter what they try, they will never succeed. Unless something happens to break this pattern of thinking, such an individual may develop depression.
Having shown that you can develop pessimistic thinking habits, Seligman set out to prove that it is equally possible to learn to think optimistically. With his team of researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, Seligman formulated a treatment program for children who were showing any symptoms of depression or who came from troubled homes (a key risk factor for depression). The Penn Prevention Program taught the children techniques for facing difficult situations with optimism. After completing the prevention program, a number of children in the group experiencing strong depression found that their symptoms had been reduced by 35 per cent. Two years later none of the children was experiencing strong depressive symptoms! The Penn Prevention Program not only prevented the children from becoming depressed, or arrested the onset of their depression, but it also made them more optimistic than their peers who had not participated in the program.
Based on the Penn Prevention Program, here are four techniques to enable you to think more optimistically.
Thought-catching – learn to identify the self-defeating thoughts that automatically run through your mind when you are feeling sad, depressed or stressed.
Thought evaluation – by scrutinizing your negative thoughts, you will be able to pick out any inaccurate suppositions and generalizations upon which they are based.
Accurate explanation – replace your negative and inaccurate suppositions with more positive, more realistic ones.
Decatastrophizing – instead of paralyzing yourself with thoughts about all the things that could go wrong, focus on solving the problem at hand.
Taking as an example the scenario of preparing to play in a concert, the following passage of self-talk (see exercise, opposite) shows how these four techniques can work together:
“I’ll never be able to learn this piece for the concert – I’m just not good enough. Hold on [thought-catching], how can I possibly know I’m not up to it if I don’t try [thought evaluation]? This piece is no more difficult than the one I played well in last year’s concert. I’ll be fine if I practise [accurate explanation]. If I set aside enough time now, I won’t run into problems later [decatastrophizing].”