Anticipatory and Post Hoc Cushioning Strategies: Optimism and Defensive Pessimism in "Risky" Situations
[COMPLETE ARTICLE READ IN FULL AT SOURCE, including the prescreening questionnaire, all four tables and the discussion, from the author copy at a university repository] Norem, J. K., & Cantor, N. (1986). 'Anticipatory and Post Hoc Cushioning Strategies: Optimism and Defensive Pessimism in "Risky" Situations.' Cognitive Therapy and Research 10(3), 347-362. No DOI appears on the citation, so this entry is keyed by first author and year. Design: 1,027 introductory-psychology students screened on an eight-item academic optimism-pessimism questionnaire plus a choice among four strategy profiles, one of which, a 'regular' pessimistic profile the authors describe as resembling depression, was deliberately excluded. Selected pessimists sat at an average rank of 1,009 out of 1,027 and optimists at 22; only students with a grade point average of 3.0 or above were included, and only those who strongly endorsed having generally done well academically in the past, with no significant difference in grade point average between groups, 3.34 against 3.23. 69 participants, 35 optimists and 34 pessimists, predicted their performance on an anagram task, took it, received false success or failure feedback, took it again, completed a post-test and were debriefed. Findings as read: pessimists predicted significantly worse performance, F(1, 68) = 6.15, p = .02; actual performance did not differ at either trial, all Fs < 1; optimists showed attributional egotism and pessimists did not, with successful optimists reporting significantly more control than failed optimists, F(1, 34) = 14.50, p = .0006 on trial one, while pessimists' reports of control did not differ across feedback; and failure pessimists were no less satisfied than failure optimists, Fs < 1, 'even though they are not doing post hoc cushioning'. Their conclusion: 'The pessimists are not simply prone to lower evaluations of their performance, or to a generally "gloomy" outlook.' Mechanism, quotable: by 'playing through' potential bad outcomes before they occur, 'the defensive pessimist gains some degree of control over his anxiety', and the strategy 'seems to be acting as a form of "natural" cognitive therapy for those using it'. LIMITS THAT MUST TRAVEL: 69 undergraduates on an anagram task with false feedback, measuring expectations, satisfaction and attributions, not health and not mortality; and the authors are explicit that this is a domain-specific strategy rather than a trait, their academic and social screenings correlating at only r = .38. THE COMPANION PAPER, Norem and Cantor 1986 in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 51(6), 1208-1217, doi:10.1037/0022-3514.51.6.1208, WAS NOT READ and nothing is attributed to it beyond its existence and title.
[COMPLETE ARTICLE READ IN FULL AT SOURCE, including the prescreening questionnaire, all four tables and the discussion, from the author copy at a university repository] Norem, J. K., & Cantor, N. (1986). 'Anticipatory and Post Hoc Cushioning Strategies: Optimism and Defensive Pessimism in "Risky" Situations.' Cognitive Therapy and Research 10(3), 347-362. No DOI appears on the citation, so this entry is keyed by first author and year. Design: 1,027 introductory-psychology students screened on an eight-item academic optimism-pessimism questionnaire plus a choice among four strategy profiles, one of which, a 'regular' pessimistic profile the authors describe as resembling depression, was deliberately excluded. Selected pessimists sat at an average rank of 1,009 out of 1,027 and optimists at 22; only students with a grade point average of 3.0 or above were included, and only those who strongly endorsed having generally done well academically in the past, with no significant difference in grade point average between groups, 3.34 against 3.23. 69 participants, 35 optimists and 34 pessimists, predicted their performance on an anagram task, took it, received false success or failure feedback, took it again, completed a post-test and were debriefed. Findings as read: pessimists predicted significantly worse performance, F(1, 68) = 6.15, p = .02; actual performance did not differ at either trial, all Fs < 1; optimists showed attributional egotism and pessimists did not, with successful optimists reporting significantly more control than failed optimists, F(1, 34) = 14.50, p = .0006 on trial one, while pessimists' reports of control did not differ across feedback; and failure pessimists were no less satisfied than failure optimists, Fs < 1, 'even though they are not doing post hoc cushioning'. Their conclusion: 'The pessimists are not simply prone to lower evaluations of their performance, or to a generally "gloomy" outlook.' Mechanism, quotable: by 'playing through' potential bad outcomes before they occur, 'the defensive pessimist gains some degree of control over his anxiety', and the strategy 'seems to be acting as a form of "natural" cognitive therapy for those using it'. LIMITS THAT MUST TRAVEL: 69 undergraduates on an anagram task with false feedback, measuring expectations, satisfaction and attributions, not health and not mortality; and the authors are explicit that this is a domain-specific strategy rather than a trait, their academic and social screenings correlating at only r = .38. THE COMPANION PAPER, Norem and Cantor 1986 in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 51(6), 1208-1217, doi:10.1037/0022-3514.51.6.1208, WAS NOT READ and nothing is attributed to it beyond its existence and title.
Written from the cOMPLETE ARTICLE READ IN FULL AT SOURCE, including the prescreening questionnaire, all four tables and the discussion, from the author copy at a university repository.
What our sources record
Recorded when this source was checked, figures included, with page references and quotation marks removed.
Norem, J. K., & Cantor, N. (1986). Anticipatory and Post Hoc Cushioning Strategies: Optimism and Defensive Pessimism in "Risky" Situations. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 10(3), 347-362