User:Yvonne S/On optimism and pessimism

I just came across a brief four year old discussion of optimism v. pessimism. Some years ago I read about optimism and the benefits it brings to ones life. Interestingly enough the optimism is only of value as it is tempered with a spoon full of reality or, dare I say the word, pessimism. Some experimenters put a group of people in a room with a rigged light switch. Some were identified as optimists and some as pessimists. The light switch was rigged so that sometimes it would work and sometimes it wouldn't. When asked to evaluate how often the light switched worked the researches were surprised to find that the optimists got it wrong every time and the pessimists were right every time. So the optimists would probably keep trying to turn the darn thing on even when it didn't work.

It appears that optimists might not be accurate in their assessment of the events in their lives, but they will be happier than the pessimists who know exactly what is going on.