Exploration on the structure of college students’ optimism and development of questionnaire

Objective To explore the structure of college students’ optimism and develop a questionnaire. Methods The initial items of the questionnaire are formed by interview, open questionnaire and document retrieval. On the basis of forecast, 692 valid questionnaires are obtained from the subjects with the self-designed questionnaire. The life orientation questionnaire is used to test the validity of the criterion. Results The questionnaire on college students’ optimism contains 13 items, including two high-order factors: optimism and pessimism. Optimism includes optimistic expectation and optimistic explanatory style which pessimism factor includes pessimistic expectation and pessimistic explanatory style. The fitting indicators are better (X2/df = 3.45, GFI = 0.96, IFI = 0.95, NNFI = 0.93, CFI = 0.95 and RMSEA = 0.06), internal consistency reliability is between 0.61 and 0.74, and all sub-dimensions of the questionnaire are significantly correlated. The total scores of the questionnaire and four factors are positively correlated with the total scores of the life orientation questionnaire (0.74 ∼ 0.81). Conclusion The college students’ optimism is composed of four factors; the reliability and validity meet the requirements of psychometrics, and can be used in related research and practice. This study seemed to show that the CSOQ was a valid tool for measuring optimism among Chinese college students.

Explanatory Style in Patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis: An Unrecognized Predictor of Mortality

Objective.To determine whether pessimistic explanatory style altered the risk for and mortality of patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA).Methods.The study included subjects from a population-based cohort with incident RA and a non-RA comparison cohort who completed the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory.Results.Among 148 RA and 135 non-RA subjects, pessimism was associated with development of rheumatoid factor (RF)–positive RA. Pessimism was associated with an increased risk of mortality [HR 2.88 with similar magnitude to RF+ (HR 2.28)].Conclusion.Pessimistic explanatory style was associated with an increased risk of developing RA and increased mortality rate in patients with RA.

Learned Optimism in Children

In this chapter examines learned optimism in children and examines a depression prevention program for children. It focuses on two related cognitive-behavioral risk factors for depression in children; learned helplessness and pessimistic explanatory style. It briefly profiles childhood depression and outlines the nature of learned helplessness and pessimism in children, before offering two conceptualizations of learned optimism.

Explanatory Style as a Mediator Between Childhood Emotional Abuse and Nonsuicidal Self-Injury

For this study the researchers recruited a random sample of college men and women (N = 390) and examined whether a pessimistic explanatory style mediated the relationship between childhood emotional abuse and frequency of nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) in the past year. The study found that pessimistic explanatory style was positively associated with NSSI and that pessimistic style functioned as a partial mediator of the childhood emotional abuse-NSSI relation. Clinical implications for mental health counselors are discussed.

Self-Administered Optimism Training: Mechanisms of Change in a Minimally Supervised Psychoeducational Intervention

Pessimistic explanatory style is a robust predictor of future depressive symptoms. There were 112 college students with a pessimistic explanatory style identified from a larger screening sample. Participants were randomly assigned to Self-Administered Optimism Training or a no-treatment control group. Participants assigned to SOT received 10 minutes of instruction regarding self-monitoring of how they assigned causes to events in their lives and “brainstorming” alternate causes, and then sent off to record daily diaries that captured this information every day for 28 days. The SOT participants demonstrated significant drops in pessimism in three separate but related assessments. Further, findings indicated a significant correlation between cognitive change and depression symptom change for the SOT group but not the control group. Although preliminary in nature, findings from the current study demonstrate the feasibility and preliminary efficacy of an inexpensive, prophylactic treatment for depression that utilizes a minimum of therapist contact.

Association between lung cancer survival and pessimistic explanatory style

6518 Background: Several studies have demonstrated the importance of pessimism in cardiovascular disease. However, this construct has not been well explored in oncology. Methods: This study examined the survival time of 534 adult who were diagnosed with lung cancer. These patients had completed the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) approximately 18.2 years prior to their lung cancer diagnosis. MMPI Optimism-Pessimism (PSM) scores were divided into high (60 or more) and low scores (less than 60), and log-rank tests and Kaplan-Meier curves were used to determine survival differences. Multivariate Cox models were used for assessing prognostic values of pessimism along with other known predictors for survival outcome. Results: At the time of diagnosis, patients were on average 67 years old, 48% were female, 85% had non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), 15% had small cell lung cancer (SCLC), 30% were stage I, 4% were stage II, 31% were stage III/Limited, and 35% were stage IV/Extensive. Patients who exhibited a non-pessimistic explanatory style survived approximately six months longer than patients classified as pessimists. Pessimists have significantly worse survival rates even after adjusting for other known prognostic variables. Conclusions: Among lung cancer patients, having a pessimistic explanatory style was related to surviving on average six months less compared to patients with a non-pessimistic explanatory style. [Table: see text] No significant financial relationships to disclose.