The scale has been shown to be applicable to a broad range of populations, including adults in poverty, adolescents with depression, sufferers of social anxiety, and victims of trauma.Īnother strength of the scale is its brevity, making it particularly useful from a practitioner’s perspective. This revised scale is now one of the most commonly used measures of dispositional optimism across both research and practice. While these concern were eventually dispelled following correlational analyzes in Scheier, Carver, and Bridges (1994), the authors proceeded to remove two items in the twelve-item LOT that they believed were conceptually out of alignment with the other items, leading to the formation of the ten-item Life Orientation Test-Revised (LOT-R). In other words, scholars were concerned that effects being attributed to optimism as assessed by the LOT were actually the result of a third, unmeasured variable. However, the scale was criticized on the grounds that effects attributable to optimism were indistinguishable from those predicted by traits associated with neuroticism, such as anxiety (Smith, Pope, Rhodewalt & Poulton, 1989). Scheier and Carver’s first version of the scale (the LOT) initially comprised twelve items. So, as a starting point, the authors began by designing their own measurement instrument. However, observing that there had previously been little research on the concept of optimism as an antecedent to health-related behaviors, there appeared to be a significant gap in the literature. In particular, Scheier and Carver (1985) sought to understand the implications of such stable attitudes for the positive regulation of behavior, particularly in the context of health.
And although psychologists are not entirely in agreement regarding the factors that produce dispositional optimism, most will agree that an optimistic outlook serves us better throughout life than a pessimistic one. Whether or not we are optimistic in our nature tends to depend on both our genetic predisposition, environmental factors, and learned attitudes throughout our lives. “…an individual difference variable that reflects the extent to which people hold generalized favorable expectancies for their future.” Today, we think of this broad set of attitudes as optimism, which is defined as:
The impetus to design the measure followed the researchers’ casual observation that some people tend toward a positive outlook, assuming good things will happen to them, while others approach the world with a more pessimistic set of attitudes. The Life Orientation Test (LOT) was first created by Michael Scheier and Charles Carver in 1985 and published in Health Psychology.
#ACCORDING TO SELIGMAN AN UNREALISTIC OPTIMISM HOW TO#
This article will show you how to administer the Life Orientation Test, outlines a conceptualization of optimism, and reviews several successful examples of the scale’s application in research.īefore you continue, we thought you might like to download our three Goal Achievement Exercises for free. This makes the instrument a useful tool for any practitioner’s toolkit. The Life Orientation Test (LOT) is a standard psychological instrument that assesses one’s dispositional level of optimism, providing meaningful insight into possible interventions, such as those to address harmful thought patterns.
Positive psychologists are particularly interested in the attitude of optimism because whether we bring a stable sense of optimism to situations flows on to affect our thoughts, feelings, and actions across a range of domains. People differ in the degree to which they possess confidence and hope that future events will turn out positively.
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