Psy 220 Optimism and Health

Optimism is very important to a person’s physical and psychological well-being. Optimism can bring a person up when things appear down while optimism can also help a person get through the tougher times. Optimism can help a person be confident and hopeful in times when there appears to be no hope or it can be linked to depression among a few things. Many people have questioned if having optimism can help a cancer reddened person have hope or if optimism brings the person down when there is no help. Having optimism does help a person to keep up hope when areas of a person’s life appears bleak and studies have proved that optimism is good for a person. The article, Dispositional Optimism and Primary and Secondary Appraisal of a Stressor : Controlling for Confounding Influences and Relations to Coping and Psychological and Physical Adjustment by Edward C. Chang, is about the link between optimism and pessimism has with the physical and psychological well-being and the many tests that a person could complete to discover how high or low the optimism is. The author speaks about the many studies that have been conducted over the past years and have found that optimism has a connection with adjustment, such as optimism being linked with post partum depression with women. Another is the link of coping in which optimism has been used in many different coping methods, such as approach and avoidant coping, and the article spoke about appraisals being important determinants for coping. There is also a mention of a model in which it is believed that one important reason why optimists are better adjusted than their more pessimistic counterparts is because they often attempt to change conditions related to a stressful situation rather than ignore or withdraw from them. The studies are mentioned throughout the course of the article and it constantly states how optimism is measured in different ways to handle the different coping methods, such as the Life Orientation Test