Optimism and Pessimism in Sport
By Daniel R. Czech, PhD
Optimism and pessimism refer to one's expectations for what the future holds. Both dimensions are relatively stable across time and context, influencing not only a person’s emotions, but also a person's decision about striving for success or giving up. Optimistic individuals are characterized as having positive expectations and perceptions on life in that the future holds desirable outcomes. In contrast, pessimistic individuals tend to represent a negative bias towards life. Pessimists view the future as undesirable.
An individual athlete with the higher optimistic explanatory style should go on to win. This type of athlete was found to try harder, particularly after defeat or under stiff challenge. In addition, the same results hold true for teams. If talent is somewhat equal, the more optimistic team should win. This phenomenon is most apparent when a team is under pressure. Furthermore, when an athlete’s explanatory style is changed from pessimistic to optimistic, he should win more, especially when he is under pressure.
Our results are taken from a unique study. The study, which focused on the team aspect, used the technique of content analysis of verbatim explanations. This technique involved the researchers to study for an entire season every sports page quote including any casual statements of an individual on a team. From this, an average from all quotes was computed. This computation was then turned into the team’s explanatory style.
We studied both the 1985 New York Mets and the 1985 St. Louis Cardinals from the Major League Baseball Association and the 1984 Boston Celtics and the 1985 New Jersey Nets from the National Basketball Association. We found the Mets and the Cardinals to have had different explanatory styles. When the Mets lost, they explained their failure as temporary, specific, and not their fault (optimistic explanatory style). The Cardinals explained bad events as permanent, pervasive, and their own fault (pessimistic explanatory style). In regards to these results, the Mets were a “wonder” team the following year in 1986. They won the division pennant, playoffs and the World Series. The Cardinals won only 49% of their games finishing in the bottom half of their division in 1986.
From these results, we’ve concluded that teams as well as individual athletes have a measurable explanatory style and that this explanatory style may predict how a team will perform -- above and beyond how good they are predicted to be. It’s important to note that success on the playing field, and in life, is predicted by optimism, while failure is predicted by pessimism. So stay positive!