Defensive pessimism is the deliberate use of pessimism as a strategy. For example, a sales team might review a sales pitch with … Defensive pessimism. A job applicant is anxious about a job interview, so she thinks … People use defensive pessimism as a strategy to prepare for anxiety-provoking events or performances. The Uses and Abuses of Optimism and Pessimism ... for example, can act as a bulwark ... known as "defensive pessimism," involves imagining all the things that might go wrong in the future. If you didn't know any better, you might say we're a country that preaches optimism.
For example, worrying about an upcoming exam may be effective for some students, but ineffective or even counterproductive for others. Defensive pessimism is the adoption of pessimism by individuals or teams that may be optimistic for a specific purpose such as validating a plan. When defensive pessimists try to force optimism, for example, it leads them to neglect some of the preparation keyed off by their worrying, causing poorer results. Pessimism is often considered a character trait whereby some people are inherently more pessimistic than others. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. The benefits of defensive pessimism also extends to actual performance.
Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading The Positive Power Of Negative Thinking: Using Defensive Pessimism to Harness Anxiety and Perform at Your Peak.
Defensive pessimism is a tendency to think negatively about your current or future situation in order to avoid disappointment and keep yourself focused on areas for improvement. This research concerns the interaction between performance strategies and imagery conditions. The present study is centrally concerned with self-handicapping and defensive pessimism (comprising defensive expectations and reflectivity), the factors that predict these strategies, and the associations between these strategies and a variety of academic outcomes.
The Upside of Pessimism The theory of defensive pessimism suggests that imagining—and planning for—worst-case scenarios can be more effective than … Smile.