Theory of reasoned action

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Theory of Reasoned Action (ToRA or TRA) aims to explain the relationship between attitudes and behaviors within human action. It is mainly used to predict how individuals will behave based on their pre-existing attitudes and behavioral intentions. An individual's decision to engage in a particular behavior is based on the outcomes the individual expects will come as a result of performing the behavior. Developed by Martin Fishbein and Icek Ajzen in 1967, the theory derived from previous research in social psychology, persuasion models, and attitude theories. Fishbein's theories suggested a relationship between attitude and behaviors (the A-B relationship). However, critics estimated that attitude theories were not proving to be good indicators of human behavior. The ToRA was later revised and expanded by the two theorists in the following decades to overcome any discrepancies in the A-B relationship with the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and Reasoned Action Approach (RAA). The theory is also used in communication discourse as a theory of understanding.

The primary purpose of the TRA is to understand an individual's voluntary behavior by examining the underlying basic motivation to perform an action. ToRA states that a person's intention to perform a behavior is the main predictor of whether or not they actually perform that behavior. Additionally, the normative component (i.e. social norms surrounding the act) also contributes to whether or not the person will actually perform the behavior. According to the theory, intention to perform a certain behavior precedes the actual behavior. This intention is known as behavioral intention and comes as a result of a belief that performing the behavior will lead to a specific outcome. Behavioral intention is important to the theory because these intentions "are determined by attitudes to behaviors and subjective norms". The theory of reasoned action suggests that stronger intentions lead to increased effort to perform the behavior, which also increases the likelihood for the behavior to be performed.

Key Concepts and Conditions

Behavior

A positivistic approach to behavior research, ToRA attempts to predict and explain one's intention of performing a certain behavior. The theory requires that behavior be clearly defined in terms of the four following concepts: Action (e.g. to go get), Target (e.g. a mammogram), Context (e.g. at the breast screening center), and Time (e.g. in the 12 months). According to TRA, behavioral intention is the main motivator of behavior, while the two key determinants on behavioral intention are people's attitudes and norms. By examining attitudes and subjective norms, researchers can gain an understanding as to whether or not one will perform the intended action.

Attitudes

According to TRA, attitudes are one of the key determinants of behavioral intention and refer to the way people feel towards a particular behavior. These attitudes are influenced by two factors: the strength of behavioral beliefs regarding the outcomes of the performed behavior (i.e. whether or not the outcome is probable) and the evaluation of the potential outcomes (i.e. whether or not the outcome is positive). Attitudes regarding a certain behavior can either be positive, negative or neutral. The theory stipulates that there exists a direct correlation between attitudes and outcomes, such that if one believes that a certain behavior will lead to a desirable or favorable outcome, then one is more likely to have a positive attitude towards the behavior. Alternatively, if one believes that a certain behavior will lead to an undesirable or unfavorable outcome, then one is more likely to have a negative attitude towards the behavior.

Behavioral Belief

Behavioral belief allows us to understand people's motivations for their behavior in terms of the behavior's consequences. This concept stipulates that people tend to associate the performance of a certain behavior with a certain set of outcomes or features. For example, a person believes that if he or she studies for a month for his or her driver's license test, that one will pass the test after failing it the first time without studying at all. Here, the behavioral belief is that studying for a month is equated with success, whereas not studying at all is associated with failure.

Evaluation

The evaluation of the outcome refers to the way people perceive and evaluate the potential outcomes of a performed behavior. Such evaluations are conceived in a binary "good-bad" fashion-like manner. For example, a person may evaluate the outcome of quitting smoking cigarettes as positive if the behavioral belief is improved breathing and clean lungs. Conversely, a person may evaluate the outcome of quitting smoking cigarettes as negative if the behavioral belief is weight gain after smoking cessation.

Subjective Norms

Subjective norms are also one of the key determinants of behavioral intention and refer to the way perceptions of relevant groups or individuals such as family members, friends, and peers may affect one's performance of the behavior. Ajzen defines subjective norms as the "perceived social pressure to perform or not perform the behavior". According to TRA, people develop certain beliefs or normative beliefs as to whether or not certain behaviors are acceptable. These beliefs shape one's perception of the behavior and determine one's intention to perform or not perform the behavior. For example, if one believes that recreational drug use (the behavior) is acceptable within one's social group, one will more likely be willing to engage in the activity. Alternatively, if one's friends groups perceive that the behavior is bad, one will be less likely to engage in recreational drug use. However, subjective norms also take into account people's motivation to comply with their social circle's views and perceptions, which vary depending on the situation and the individual's motivations.

Normative Beliefs

Normative beliefs touch on whether or not referent relevant groups approve of the action. There exists a direct correlation between normative beliefs and performance of the behavior. Usually, the more likely the referent groups will approve of the action, the more likely the individual perform the act. Conversely, the less likely the referent groups will approve of the action, the less likely the individual will perform the act.

Motivation to Comply

Motivation to comply addresses the fact that individuals may or may not comply with social norms of the referent groups surrounding the act. Depending on the individuals motivations in terms of adhering to social pressures, the individual will either succumb to the social pressures of performing the act if it is deemed acceptable, or alternatively will resist to the social pressures of performing the act if it is deemed unacceptable.

Behavioral Intention

Behavioral intention is a function of both attitudes and subjective norms toward that behavior (also known as the normative component). Attitudes being how strongly one holds the attitude toward the act and subjective norms being the social norms associated with the act. The stronger the attitude and the more positive the subjective norm, the higher the A-B relationship should be. However, the attitudes and subjective norms are unlikely to be weighted equally in predicting behavior. Depending on the individual and situation, these factors might have different impacts on behavioral intention, thus a weight is associated with each of these factors. A few studies have shown that direct prior experience with a certain activity results in an increased weight on the attitude component of the behavior intention function.

Formula

In its simplest form, the TRA can be expressed as the following equation:

${\displaystyle BI{=}(AB)W_{1}+(SN)W_{2}\,\!}$

where:

• BI = behavioral intention
• (AB) = one's attitude toward performing the behavior
• W = empirically derived weights
• SN = one's subjective norm related to performing the behavior

Conditions

The TORA theorists note that there are three conditions that can affect the relationship between behavioral intention and behavior. The first condition is that "the measure of intention must correspond with respect to their levels of specificity". This means that to predict a specific behavior, the behavioral intention must be equally specific. The second condition is that there must be "stability of intentions between time of measurement and performance of behavior". The intention must remain the same between the time that it is given and the time that the behavior is performed. The third condition is "the degree to which carrying out the intention is under the volitional control of the individual". The individual always has the control of whether or not to perform the behavior. These conditions have to do with the transition from verbal responses to actual behavior.

Scope and Limitations

Scope

While Fishbein and Ajzen developed the ToRA within the field of health to understand health behaviors, the theorists asserted that TRA could be applied in any given context to understand and even predict any human behavior. According to Sheppard et al., behavioral intention can predict the performance of "any voluntary act, unless intent changes prior to the performance or unless the intention measure does not correspond to the behavioral criterion in terms of action, target, context, time-frame and/or specificity". Their statement asserts that according to TRA, the measure of behavioral intention can predict whether or not an individual will perform a certain act, as long as the behavioral intention remains the same and the behavior is clearly and properly defined. Broadening the scope of TRA, Sheppard conducted a study in which they applied TRA in situations that did not completely comply or conform with Fishbein and Ajzen's framework. Surveying 87 previous empirical studies, they applied the theory in contexts where the individual did not have full volitional control over the behavior and/or where individuals did not have all the information to develop the intention. To their surprise, they found that the theory of reasoned action could successfully be applied in situations that did not fully adhere to the three formal terms and conditions specified by the theory.

Limitations

Although the scope of TRA is wide, the theory still has its limitations and like any other theory, needs constant refinement and revision particularly when extending to choice and goals. The distinction between a goal intention and a behavioral intention concerns the capability to achieve one's intention, which involves multiple variables thus creating great uncertainty. Ajzen acknowledged that "some behaviors are more likely to present problems of controls than others, but we can never be absolutely certain that we will be in a position to carry out our intentions. Viewed in this light it becomes clear that strictly speaking every intention is a goal whose attainment is subject to some degree of uncertainty." 

According to Eagly and Chaiken, TRA does not take into account that certain conditions that enable the performance of a behavior are not available to individuals. Since the ToRA focuses on behaviors that people decisively enact, the theory is limited in terms of being able to predict behaviors that require access to certain opportunities, skills, conditions, and/or resources. Additionally, certain intentions do not necessarily play a role in terms of connecting attitudes and behavior. According to a study conducted by Bagozzi and Yi, the performance of a behavior is not always preceded by a strong intent. In fact, attitudes and behaviors may not always be linked by intentions, particularly when the behavior does not require much cognitive effort.

Development and investigation

In 1979, H. C. Triandis proposed expanding TORA to include more components. These factors were habit, facilitating conditions, and affect. When a person performs a behavior in a routine manner they form a habit. Facilitating conditions are conditions that make completion of an action more or less difficult. Both of these conditions affect their behavior directly. On the other hand, affect is the emotional response a person has towards a behavior and this emotional response only affects behavioral intention rather than directly affecting behavior. This expanded version of TORA has been used to study behaviors like women's participation in mammography procedures.

In 1985, Ajzen extended TORA to what he refers as the theory of planned behavior (TPB). This involves the addition of one major predictor—perceived behavioral control. This addition was introduced to account for times when people have the intention to conduct the behavior, but the actual behavior is thwarted because of subjective and objective reasons. In the theory of planned behavior, the attitude, subjective norms, and behavioral control have "important although differently weighted effects on a person's intention to behave".

In spite of the improvement, it is suggested that TORA and TPB only provides an account of the determinants of behavior when both motivation and opportunity to process information are high. Further research demonstrating the casual relationships among the variables in TPB and any expansions of it is clearly necessary. The model also mentions little about the memory process.

Applications of the theory

The theory of reasoned action has been used in many studies as a framework for examining specific kinds of behavior such as communication behavior, consumer behavior and health behavior. Many researchers use the theory to study behaviors that are associated with high risks and danger, as well as deviant behavior. In contrast, some research has applied the theory to more normative and rational types of action. Researchers Davies, Foxall, and Pallister suggest that the theory of reasoned action can be tested if "behavior is measured objectively without drawing a connection to prior intention". Most studies, however, look at intention because of its central role in the theory.

Communication

College fraternity and sorority hazing

Theory of Reasoned Action has been applied to the study of whistle-blowing intentions and hazing in college organizations, specifically fraternities and sororities. Hazing is understood to be "any activity expected of someone that joins a group, which humiliates, degrades, abuses or endangers its victims". In the United States, there have been a variety of hazing incidents that have resulted in death and harm of students on several college campuses. Whistle-blowing "involves an individual with some level of unique or inside knowledge using public communication to bring attention to some perceived wrongdoing or problem. Whistle-blowing is significant to this issue because individuals who are aware of hazing incidents can come forward to university officials and make the occurrence of hazing known. In their study, Richardson et al. set out to study whistle-blowing by using the theory of reasoned action as a framework to predict whether or not individuals will come forward about report hazing incidents. Their study served to examine whether the relationships suggested by the TRA model remain true in predicting whistle blowing intentions, and if these relationships would change depending on the severity of the hazing incident. 

Richardson et al. surveyed a sample of 259 students from Greek organizations at university in the Southwestern United States. The survey questions measured the different aspects of the TRA model: behavioral beliefs, outcome evaluations, attitude toward the behavior, normative beliefs, motivation to comply, subjective norms, and the consequence endogenous variable. The questions asked respondents to rate their responses on various 7 point scales. "Participants in the study responded to one of three scenarios, varying in level of severity, describing a hazing situation occurring in their fraternity or sorority". In line with the theory, the researchers wanted to identify if attitudes held about hazing, dangerous activity, and group affiliation, along with subjective norms about whistle-blowing (reactions by others, consequences of reporting the action, isolation from the group) would influence whether or not an individual would go through with reporting a hazing incident. The results of the study found that individuals were more likely to report, or whistle-blow, on hazing incidents that were more severe or harmful to individuals. Simultaneously, individuals were also concerned about the perceptions of others' attitudes towards them and the consequences they may face if they reported hazing incidents.

Knowledge sharing in companies

TRA is used to examine the communication behavior in corporations. One of the behaviors TRA helped characterize is knowledge sharing (KS) in companies. In the study conducted by Ho, Hsu, and Oh, they proposed two models to construct KS process by introducing TRA and game theory (GT). One model captures personal psychological feelings (attitudes and subjective norms), the other model not only captures personal feelings but also takes other people's decisions into consideration. By comparing the two models, researchers found that the model based on TRA has a higher predictive accuracy than the model based on TRA and GT. They concluded that employees "have a high probability of not analyzing the decisions of others", and whether taking other colleague's decision into account has a great impact on people's KS behavioral intention. It is indicated that "the more indirect decision-makers there are in organizations, the less effective is KS". To encourage KS, company managers should avoid including indirect decision-makers in the projects.

Consumer behavior

Coupon usage

Coupon usage has also been studied through the theory of reasoned action framework by researchers interested in consumer and marketer behavior. In 1984, Terence Shimp and Alican Kavas applied this theory to coupon usage behavior, with the research premise that "coupon usage is rational, systematic, and thoughtful behavior" in contrast with other applications of the theory to more dangerous types of behavior.

Theory of Reasoned Action serves as a useful model because it can help examine whether "consumers' intentions to use coupons are determined by their attitudes and perceptions of whether important others think one should or should not expend the effort to clip, save, and use coupons". The consumer's behavior intentions are influenced by their personal beliefs about coupon usage, meaning whether or not they think saving money is important and are willing to spend the time clipping coupons. These potential beliefs also influenced the coupon user's thoughts about what others think about their usage of coupons. Together, the coupon user will use their own beliefs and the opinions of others to form an overall attitude towards coupon usage. To approach this study, Shimp and Alican surveyed 770 households and measured the aspects of the TRA model in terms of the participant's responses. The received responses indicated that consumers' norms are "partially determined by their personal beliefs toward coupon usage, and to an even greater extend, that attitudes are influenced by internalizing others' beliefs". Positive attitudes towards this behavior are influenced by an individual's perceptions that their partners will be satisfied by their time spent and efforts made to save money. 

3 variables in Unit Brand Loyalty (UBL)

Brand loyalty

TRA has been applied to redefine brand loyalty. According to the theory of reasoned action, the antecedents of purchase behaviour are attitudes towards the purchase and subjective norm. In 1998, Ha conducted a study to investigate the relationships among several antecedents of unit brand loyalty (UBL) by introducing TRA. Consumers are brand loyal when both attitude and behavior are favorable. In his study, Ha developed a table indicating 8 combinations of customers' brand loyalty based on their loyalty on 3 variables – attitude towards the behavior, subjective norm, and purchase behavior is loyal. According to Ha, marketing managers should not be discouraged by a temporary disloyalty and need to strive for grabbing brand loyalty when customers are showing loyalty to two of the three variables, but they need to rediagnose their customers' brand loyalty when customers are showing loyalty to only one of them. The main focus should be pointed at either enhancing the consumer's attitude toward their brand or adjusting their brand to the social norms.

Green Behaviors

TRA has also been used to study consumer attitudes towards renewable energy. In 2000, Bang, et. al found that people who cared about environmental issues like pollution were more willing to spend more for renewable energy. Similarly, a 2008 study of Swedish consumers by Hansla et. al showed that those who with a positive view of renewable energy were more willing to spend money on sustainable energy for their homes. These studies are evidence that the emotional response people have towards a topic affects their attitude, which in turn affects their behavioral intent. These studies also provide examples for how the TRA is used to market goods that might not make the most sense from a strictly economic perspective. 

In addition, Mishara et.al 's research proved there is a positively relation between behavioral intention and actual behavior in Green Information Technology (GIT) acceptance. Those professionals with positive intentions towards GIT tend to exploit GIT into practice.

Health behavior

Condom use

Theory of Reasoned Action has been frequently used as a framework and predictive mechanism of applied research on sexual behavior, especially in prevention of sexually transmitted disease such as HIV. In 2001, Albarracín, Johnson, Fishbein, and Muellerleile applied theory of reasoned action (TRA) and theory of planned behavior (TPB) into studying how well the theories predict condom use. To be consistent with TRA, the authors synthesized 96 data sets (N = 22,594), and associate every component in condom use with certain weight. Their study indicates that the theories of reasoned action and planned behavior are highly successful predictors of condom use. According to their discussion, "people are more likely to use condoms if they have previously formed the corresponding intentions. These intentions to use condoms appear to derive from attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control. These attitudes and norms, in turn, appear to derive from outcome and normative beliefs. Nevertheless, whether behavior was assessed retrospectively or prospectively was an important moderator that influenced the magnitude of the associations between theoretically important variables."

Sexual behavior in teenage girls

In 2011, W.M. Doswell, Braxter, Cha, and Kim examined sexual behavior in African American teenage girls and applied the theory as a framework for understanding this behavior. The theory of reasoned action can explain these behaviors in that teens' behavioral intentions to engage in early sexual behavior are influenced by their pre-existing attitudes and subjective norms of their peers. Attitudes in this context are favorable or unfavorable dispositions towards teenage sexual behavior. Subjective norms are the perceived social pressure teenagers feel from their friends, classmates, and other peer groups to engage in sexual behavior. As a framework, the TRA suggests that adolescents will participate in early behavior because of their own attitudes towards the behavior and the subjective norms of their peers. In this case, intention is the willful plan to perform early sexual behavior. Findings from the student showed that the TRA was supportive in predicting early sexual behavior among African American teenage girls. Attitudes towards sex and subjective norms both correlated with intentions to participate in early sexual behavior in the study's sample.

Pediatricians, parents and HPV vaccinations

A 2011 study examining pediatricians' behaviors surrounding the Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine found that TRA predicted the pediatricians would encourage parents to get their daughters vaccinated. Roberto, Krieger, Katz, Goei, and Jain discovered that the norms surrounding this topic were more important in predicting behavior than perceived behavioral control.

Exercise

The public health community, interested in reducing rising obesity rates, has used TRA to study people's exercise behavior. A 1981 study by Bentler and Speckart revealed that intent to exercise was determined by a person's attitude toward exercise, as predicted by TRA. In a broader literature review on the study of exercise using TRA and TPB, it was determined that behavioral intent to exercise is better framed by TRA than TPB because perceived behavioral control did not have a significant effect on the intent to exercise.

Critiques

Challenges

 

According to Fishbein's and Ajzen's original (1967) formulation of TRA, a behavioral intention measure will predict the performance of any voluntary act, unless intent changes prior to performance or unless the intention measure does not correspond to the behavioral criterion in terms of action, target, context, time-frame and/or specificity. The model of TRA has been challenged by studies determined to examine its limitation and inadequacy. 

The major problem of TRA is pointed out to be the ignorance of the connections between individuals, both the interpersonal and social relations in which they act, and the broader social structures which govern social practice. Although TRA recognizes the importance of social norms, strategies are limited to a consideration of individual perceptions of these social phenomena. Individual's belief, attitudes and understandings are constituted activity, therefore the distinction of the two factors is ambiguous. In 1972, Shwartz and Tessler noted that there are other major and subjective determinants of intentions at play that go beyond attitudes toward the behavior and subjective norms. Namely, they propose that one's sense of right and wrongs, as well as one's beliefs surrounding moral obligation may also impact one's intention. This value system is internalized independently from Fishbein and Ajzen's subjective norms. Furthermore, social change may be generational rather than the sum of individual change. TRA fails to capture and oversimplifies the social processes of change and the social nature of the change itself: a model in which people collectively appropriate and construct new meanings and practice.

Additionally, the habituation of past behavior also tends to reduce the impact that intention has on behavior as the habit increases. Gradually, the performance of the behavior become less of a rational, initiative behavior and more of a learned response. In addition, intention appears to have a direct effect on behavior in the short term only. Besides, the analysis of the conceptual basis also raises concerns. It is criticized that the model does not enable the generation of hypothesis because of their ambiguity. The model focuses on analytic truth rather than synthetic one, therefore the conclusions resulting from those applications are often true by definition rather than by observation which makes the model unfalsifiable. The strengths of attitudes toward a behavior (social/personal) and subjective norms also vary cross-culturally while the process by which the behavior engaged remains the same. An example of this is shown in a cross-cultural study on fast food choices, where people from Western cultures were found to be more influenced by their prior choice of restaurant than people from Eastern cultures. This would suggest that people from different cultures weight subjective norms and existing attitudes differently. A closer examination of the cross-cultural communication process will benefit and complete the understanding of theory of reasoned action.

Future Directions

According to Jaccard James, three directions are waiting for further research in TRA. The first one is per-individual level. The second area is a split-second situations, namely, instant decision-making. The third one is multioption contexts. In other words, how people perform when facing multiple alternatives should be stressed in the future study.

Attitude (psychology)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In psychology, attitude is a psychological construct, a mental and emotional entity that inheres in, or characterizes a person. They are complex and an acquired state through experiences. It is an individual's predisposed state of mind regarding a value and it is precipitated through a responsive expression toward a person, place, thing, or event (the attitude object) which in turn influences the individual's thought and action. Prominent psychologist Gordon Allport described this latent psychological construct as "the most distinctive and indispensable concept in contemporary social psychology." Attitude can be formed from a person's past and present. Key topics in the study of attitudes include attitude strength, attitude change, consumer behavior, and attitude-behavior relationships.

Definitions

Social psychology

An attitude is an evaluation of an attitude object, ranging from extremely negative to extremely positive. Most contemporary perspectives on attitudes also permit that people can also be conflicted or ambivalent toward an object by simultaneously holding both positive and negative attitudes toward the same object. This has led to some discussion of whether individual can hold multiple attitudes toward the same object.

An attitude can be as a positive or negative evaluation of people, objects, events, activities, and ideas. It could be concrete, abstract or just about anything in your environment, but there is a debate about precise definitions. Eagly and Chaiken, for example, define an attitude as "a psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of favor or disfavor." Though it is sometimes common to define an attitude as affect toward an object, affect (i.e., discrete emotions or overall arousal) is generally understood as an evaluative structure used to form attitude object. Attitude may influence the attention to attitude objects, the use of categories for encoding information and the interpretation, judgement and recall of attitude-relevant information. These influences tend to be more powerful for strong attitudes which are accessible and based on elaborate supportive knowledge structure. The durability and impact of influence depend upon the strength formed from consistency of heuristics. Attitudes can guide encoding information, attention and behaviors, even if the individual is pursuing unrelated goals.

Jung's definition

Attitude is one of Jung's 57 definitions in Chapter XI of Psychological Types. Jung's definition of attitude is a "readiness of the psyche to act or react in a certain way". Attitudes very often come in pairs, one conscious and the other unconscious. Within this broad definition Jung defines several attitudes. 

The main (but not only) attitude dualities that Jung defines are the following.

• Consciousness and the unconscious. The "presence of two attitudes is extremely frequent, one conscious and the other unconscious. This means that consciousness has a constellation of contents different from that of the unconscious, a duality particularly evident in neurosis".
• Extraversion and introversion. This pair is so elementary to Jung's theory of types that he labeled them the "attitude-types".
• Rational and irrational attitudes. "I conceive reason as an attitude".
• The rational attitude subdivides into the thinking and feeling psychological functions, each with its attitude.
• The irrational attitude subdivides into the sensing and intuition psychological functions, each with its attitude. "There is thus a typical thinking, feeling, sensation, and intuitive attitude".
• Individual and social attitudes. Many of the latter are "isms".

In addition, Jung discusses the abstract attitude. “When I take an abstract attitude...”. Abstraction is contrasted with creationism “CREATIONISM. By this I mean a peculiarity of thinking and feeling which is the antithesis of abstraction”.

Factors

Psychological

The attitude of a person is determined by psychological factors like ideas, values, beliefs, perception, etc. All these have a complex role in determining a person's attitude. Values are ideals, guiding principles in one’s life, or overarching goals that people strive to obtain (Maio & Olson, 1998). Beliefs are cognitions about the world—subjective probabilities that an object has a particular attribute or that an action will lead to a particular outcome (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975). Beliefs can be patently and unequivocally false. For example, surveys show that a third of U.S. adults think that vaccines cause autism, despite the preponderance of scientific research to the contrary (Dixon et al., 2015). It was found that beliefs like these are tenaciously held and highly resistant to change. Another important factor that affects attitude is symbolic interactionism, these are rife with powerful symbols and charged with affect which can lead to a selective perception. Persuasion theories says that in politics, successful persuaders convince its message recipients into a selective perception or attitude polarization for turning against the opposite candidate through a repetitive process that they are in a noncommittal state and it is unacceptable and doesn't have any moral basis for it and for this they only require to chain the persuading message into a realm of plausibility (Gopnik, 2015 & O’Keefe, 2016).

Family

Family plays a significant role in the primary stage of attitudes held by individuals. Initially, a person develops certain attitudes from his parents, brothers, sister, and elders in the family. There is a high degree of relationship between parent and children in attitudes found in them.

Society

Societies play an important role in formatting the attitudes of an individual. The culture, the tradition, the language, etc., influence a person's attitudes. Society, tradition, and the culture teach individuals what is and what is not acceptable.

Economic

A person's attitude also depends on issues such as his salary, status, work environment, work as such, etc.

Structure

The classic, tripartite view offered by Rosenberg and Hovland is that an attitude contains cognitive, affective, and behavioral components. Empirical research, however, fails to support clear distinctions between thoughts, emotions, and behavioral intentions associated with a particular attitude. A criticism of the tripartite view of attitudes is that it requires cognitive, affective, and behavioral associations of an attitude to be consistent, but this may be implausible. Thus some views of attitude structure see the cognitive and behavioral components as derivative of affect or affect and behavior as derivative of underlying beliefs.

Despite debate about the particular structure of attitudes, there is considerable evidence that attitudes reflect more than evaluations of a particular object that vary from positive to negative. Among numerous attitudes, one example is people's money attitudes which may help people understand their affective love of money motive, stewardship behavior, and money cognition. These ABC components of attitudes formulate, define, and contribute to an overall construct of Monetary Intelligence which, in turn, may be related to many theoretical work-related constructs.

There is also a considerable interest in intra-attitudinal and inter-attitudinal structure, which is how an attitude is made (expectancy and value) and how different attitudes relate to one another. Which connects different attitudes to one another and to more underlying psychological structures, such as values or ideology.

Attitude component models

An influential model of attitude is the multicomponent model, where attitudes are evaluations of an object that have affective, behavioral, and cognitive components (the ABC model):

• Affective component The affective component of attitudes refer to your feelings or emotions linked to an attitude object. Affective responses influence attitudes in a number of ways. For example, many people are afraid/scared of spiders. So this negative affective response is likely to cause you to have a negative attitude towards spiders.
• Behavioural component The behavioral component of attitudes refer to past behaviours or experiences regarding an attitude object. The idea that people might infer their attitudes from their previous actions.
• Cognitive component The cognitive component of attitudes refer to the beliefs, thoughts, and attributes that we would associate with an object. Many times a person's attitude might be based on the negative and positive attributes they associate with an object.

MODE model

This is the theory of attitude evaluation (motivation and opportunity as determinants of the attitude - behavior relation). When both are present, behavior will be deliberate. When one is absent, impact on behavior will be spontaneous. The MODE model was developed by Fazio. A person's attitude can be measured in two different ways:

• Explicit measure
• Implicit measure

Explicit measure are attitudes at the conscious level, that are deliberately formed and easy to self-report. Implicit measures are attitudes that are at an unconscious level, that are involuntarily formed and are typically unknown to us. Both explicit and implicit attitudes can shape an individual's behavior. Implicit attitudes, however, are most likely to affect behavior when the demands are steep and an individual feels stressed or distracted.

Function

Another classic view of attitudes is that attitudes serve particular functions for individuals. That is, researchers have tried to understand why individuals hold particular attitudes or why they hold attitudes in general by considering how attitudes affect the individuals who hold them. Daniel Katz, for example, writes that attitudes can serve "instrumental, adjustive or utilitarian," "ego-defensive," "value-expressive," or "knowledge" functions. This functional attitude theory suggests that in order for attitudes to change (e.g., via persuasion), appeals must be made to the function(s) that a particular attitude serves for the individual. As an example, the "ego-defensive" function might be used to influence the racially prejudicial attitudes of an individual who sees themselves as open-minded and tolerant. By appealing to that individual's image of themselves as tolerant and open-minded, it may be possible to change their prejudicial attitudes to be more consistent with their self-concept. Similarly, a persuasive message that threatens self-image is much more likely to be rejected.

Daniel Katz classified attitudes into four different groups based on their functions:

1. Utilitarian: provides us with general approach or avoidance tendencies:
2. Knowledge: help people organize and interpret new information:
3. Ego-defensive: attitudes can help people protect their self-esteem;
4. Value-expressive: used to express central values or beliefs.

Utilitarian People adopt attitudes that are rewarding and that help them avoid punishment. In other words, any attitude that is adopted in a person's own self-interest is considered to serve a utilitarian function. Consider you have a condo, people with condos pay property taxes, and as a result you don't want to pay more taxes. If those factors lead to your attitude that "increases in property taxes are bad" your attitude is serving a utilitarian function. 

Knowledge People need to maintain an organized, meaningful, and stable view of the world. That being said important values and general principles can provide a framework for our knowledge. Attitudes achieve this goal by making things fit together and make sense. Example:

• I believe that I am a good person.
• I believe that good things happen to good people.
• Something bad happens to Bob.
• So I believe Bob must not be a good person.

Ego-Defensive This function involves psychoanalytic principles where people use defense mechanisms to protect themselves from psychological harm. Mechanisms include:

• Denial
• Repression
• Projection
• Rationalization

The ego-defensive notion correlates nicely with Downward Comparison Theory which holds the view that derogating a less fortunate other increases our own subjective well-being. We are more likely to use the ego-defensive function when we suffer a frustration or misfortune.

Value-Expressive

• Serves to express one's central values and self-concept.
• Central values tend to establish our identity and gain us social approval thereby showing us who we are, and what we stand for.

An example would concern attitudes toward a controversial political issue.

Formation

According to Doob (1947), learning can account for most of the attitudes we hold. The study of attitude formation is the study of how people form evaluations of persons, places or things. Theories of classical conditioning, instrumental conditioning and social learning are mainly responsible for formation of attitude. Unlike personality, attitudes are expected to change as a function of experience. In addition, exposure to the 'attitude' objects may have an effect on how a person forms his or her attitude. This concept was seen as the "Mere-Exposure Effect". Robert Zajonc showed that people were more likely to have a positive attitude on 'attitude objects' when they were exposed to it frequently than if they were not. Mere repeated exposure of the individual to a stimulus is a sufficient condition for the enhancement of his attitude toward it. Tesser (1993) has argued that hereditary variables may affect attitudes - but believes that they may do so indirectly. For example, consistency theories, which imply that we must be consistent in our beliefs and values. As with any type of heritability, to determine if a particular trait has a basis in our genes, twin studies are used. The most famous example of such a theory is Dissonance-reduction theory, associated with Leon Festinger, which explains that when the components of an attitude (including belief and behavior) are at odds an individual may adjust one to match the other (for example, adjusting a belief to match a behavior). Other theories include balance theory, originally proposed by Heider (1958), and the self-perception theory, originally proposed by Daryl Bem.

Change

Attitudes can be changed through persuasion and an important domain of research on attitude change focuses on responses to communication. Experimental research into the factors that can affect the persuasiveness of a message include:

• Target characteristics: These are characteristics that refer to the person who receives and processes a message. One such trait is intelligence - it seems that more intelligent people are less easily persuaded by one-sided messages. Another variable that has been studied in this category is self-esteem. Although it is sometimes thought that those higher in self-esteem are less easily persuaded, there is some evidence that the relationship between self-esteem and persuasibility is actually curvilinear, with people of moderate self-esteem being more easily persuaded than both those of high and low self-esteem levels (Rhodes & Woods, 1992). The mind frame and mood of the target also plays a role in this process.

• Source characteristics: The major source characteristics are expertise, trustworthiness and interpersonal attraction or attractiveness. The credibility of a perceived message has been found to be a key variable here; if one reads a report about health and believes it came from a professional medical journal, one may be more easily persuaded than if one believes it is from a popular newspaper. Some psychologists have debated whether this is a long-lasting effect and Hovland and Weiss (1951) found the effect of telling people that a message came from a credible source disappeared after several weeks (the so-called "sleeper effect"). Whether there is a sleeper effect is controversial. Perceived wisdom is that if people are informed of the source of a message before hearing it, there is less likelihood of a sleeper effect than if they are told a message and then told its source.

• Message Characteristics: The nature of the message plays a role in persuasion. Sometimes presenting both sides of a story is useful to help change attitudes. When people are not motivated to process the message, simply the number of arguments presented in a persuasive message will influence attitude change, such that a greater number of arguments will produce greater attitude change.

• Cognitive routes: A message can appeal to an individual's cognitive evaluation to help change an attitude. In the central route to persuasion the individual is presented with the data and motivated to evaluate the data and arrive at an attitude changing conclusion. In the peripheral route to attitude change, the individual is encouraged to not look at the content but at the source. This is commonly seen in modern advertisements that feature celebrities. In some cases, physician, doctors or experts are used. In other cases film stars are used for their attractiveness.

Emotion and attitude change

Emotion is a common component in persuasion, social influence, and attitude change. Much of attitude research emphasized the importance of affective or emotion components. Emotion works hand-in-hand with the cognitive process, or the way we think, about an issue or situation. Emotional appeals are commonly found in advertising, health campaigns and political messages. Recent examples include no-smoking health campaigns and political campaign advertising emphasizing the fear of terrorism. Attitudes and attitude objects are functions of cognitive, affective, and conative components. Attitudes are part of the brain’s associative networks, the spider-like structures residing in long term memory that consist of affective and cognitive nodes. 

By activating an affective or emotion node, attitude change may be possible, though affective and cognitive components tend to be intertwined. In primarily affective networks, it is more difficult to produce cognitive counterarguments in the resistance to persuasion and attitude change. 

Affective forecasting, otherwise known as intuition or the prediction of emotion, also impacts attitude change. Research suggests that predicting emotions is an important component of decision making, in addition to the cognitive processes. How we feel about an outcome may override purely cognitive rationales. 

In terms of research methodology, the challenge for researchers is measuring emotion and subsequent impacts on attitude. Since we cannot see into the brain, various models and measurement tools have been constructed to obtain emotion and attitude information. Measures may include the use of physiological cues like facial expressions, vocal changes, and other body rate measures. For instance, fear is associated with raised eyebrows, increased heart rate and increase body tension (Dillard, 1994). Other methods include concept or network mapping, and using primes or word cues in the era.

Components of emotion appeals

Any discrete emotion can be used in a persuasive appeal; this may include jealousy, disgust, indignation, fear, blue, disturbed, haunted, and anger. Fear is one of the most studied emotional appeals in communication and social influence research.

Important consequences of fear appeals and other emotion appeals include the possibility of reactance which may lead to either message rejections or source rejection and the absence of attitude change. As the EPPM suggests, there is an optimal emotion level in motivating attitude change. If there is not enough motivation, an attitude will not change; if the emotional appeal is overdone, the motivation can be paralyzed thereby preventing attitude change. 

Emotions perceived as negative or containing threat are often studied more than perceived positive emotions like humor. Though the inner-workings of humor are not agreed upon, humor appeals may work by creating incongruities in the mind. Recent research has looked at the impact of humor on the processing of political messages. While evidence is inconclusive, there appears to be potential for targeted attitude change is receivers with low political message involvement.

Important factors that influence the impact of emotion appeals include self efficacy, attitude accessibility, issue involvement, and message/source features. Self efficacy is a perception of one’s own human agency; in other words, it is the perception of our own ability to deal with a situation. It is an important variable in emotion appeal messages because it dictates a person’s ability to deal with both the emotion and the situation. For example, if a person is not self-efficacious about their ability to impact the global environment, they are not likely to change their attitude or behavior about global warming. 

Dillard (1994) suggests that message features such as source non-verbal communication, message content, and receiver differences can impact the emotion impact of fear appeals. The characteristics of a message are important because one message can elicit different levels of emotion for different people. Thus, in terms of emotion appeals messages, one size does not fit all. 

Attitude accessibility refers to the activation of an attitude from memory in other words, how readily available is an attitude about an object, issue, or situation. Issue involvement is the relevance and salience of an issue or situation to an individual. Issue involvement has been correlated with both attitude access and attitude strength. Past studies conclude accessible attitudes are more resistant to change.

Attitude-behavior relationship

The effects of attitudes on behaviors is a growing research enterprise within psychology. Icek Ajzen has led research and helped develop two prominent theoretical approaches within this field: the theory of reasoned action and, its theoretical descendant, the theory of planned behavior. Both theories help explain the link between attitude and behavior as a controlled and deliberative process.

Theory of reasoned action

The theory of reasoned action (TRA) is a model for the prediction of behavioral intention, spanning predictions of attitude and predictions of behavior. The subsequent separation of behavioral intention from behavior allows for explanation of limiting factors on attitudinal influence (Ajzen, 1980). The theory of reasoned action was developed by Martin Fishbein and Icek Ajzen (1975, 1980), derived from previous research that started out as the theory of attitude, which led to the study of attitude and behavior. The theory was "born largely out of frustration with traditional attitude–behavior research, much of which found weak correlations between attitude measures and performance of volitional behaviors" (Hale, Householder & Greene, 2003, p. 259).

Theory of planned behavior

The theory of planned behavior was proposed by Icek Ajzen in 1985 through his article "From intentions to actions: A theory of planned behavior." The theory was developed from the theory of reasoned action, which was proposed by Martin Fishbein together with Icek Ajzen in 1975. The theory of reasoned action was in turn grounded in various theories of attitude such as learning theories, expectancy-value theories, consistency theories, and attribution theory. According to the theory of reasoned action, if people evaluate the suggested behavior as positive (attitude), and if they think their significant others want them to perform the behavior (subjective norm), this results in a higher intention (motivation) and they are more likely to do so. A high correlation of attitudes and subjective norms to behavioral intention, and subsequently to behavior, has been confirmed in many studies. The theory of planned behavior contains the same component as the theory of reasoned action, but adds the component of perceived behavioral control to account for barriers outside one's own control.

Motivation and Opportunity as Determinants (MODE)

Russell H. Fazio proposed an alternative theory called "Motivation and Opportunity as Determinants" or MODE. Fazio believes that because there is deliberative process happening, individuals must be motivated to reflect on their attitudes and subsequent behaviors. Simply put, when an attitude is automatically activated, the individual must be motivated to avoid making an invalid judgement as well as have the opportunity to reflect on their attitude and behavior. 

A counter-argument against the high relationship between behavioral intention and actual behavior has also been proposed, as the results of some studies show that, because of circumstantial limitations, behavioral intention does not always lead to actual behavior. Namely, since behavioral intention cannot be the exclusive determinant of behavior where an individual's control over the behavior is incomplete, Ajzen introduced the theory of planned behavior by adding a new component, "perceived behavioral control." By this, he extended the theory of reasoned action to cover non-volitional behaviors for predicting behavioral intention and actual behavior.

Measurement

In 1928 Louis Leon Thurstone published an article titled "Attitudes Can Be Measured" in it he proposed an elaborate procedure to assess people’s views on social issues. Attitudes can be difficult to measure because measurement is arbitrary, because attitudes are ultimately a hypothetical construct that cannot be observed directly. 

But many measurements and evidence proofed scales are used to examine attitudes. A Likert scale taps agreement or disagreement with a series of belief statements. The Guttman scale focuses on items that vary in their degree of psychological difficulty. The semantic differential uses bipolar adjectives to measure the meaning associated with attitude objects. Supplementing these are several indirect techniques such as unobtrusive, standard physiological, and neuroscientific measures. Following the explicit-implicit dichotomy, attitudes can be examined through direct and indirect measures. 

Whether attitudes are explicit (i.e., deliberately formed) versus implicit (i.e., subconscious) has been a topic of considerable research. Research on implicit attitudes, which are generally unacknowledged or outside of awareness, uses sophisticated methods involving people's response times to stimuli to show that implicit attitudes exist (perhaps in tandem with explicit attitudes of the same object). Implicit and explicit attitudes seem to affect people's behavior, though in different ways. They tend not to be strongly associated with each other, although in some cases they are. The relationship between them is poorly understood.

Explicit

Explicit measures tend to rely on self-reports or easily observed behaviors. These tend to involve bipolar scales (e.g., good-bad, favorable-unfavorable, support-oppose, etc.). Explicit measures can also be used by measuring the straightforward attribution of characteristics to nominate groups. Explicit attitudes that develop in response to recent information, automatic evaluation were thought to reflect mental associations through early socialization experiences. Once formed, these associations are highly robust and resistant to change, as well as stable across both context and time. Hence the impact of contextual influences was assumed to be obfuscate assessment of a person's "true" and enduring evaluative disposition as well as limit the capacity to predict subsequent behavior. Likert scales and other self-reports are also commonly used.

Implicit

Implicit measures are not consciously directed and are assumed to be automatic, which may make implicit measures more valid and reliable than explicit measures (such as self-reports). For example, people can be motivated such that they find it socially desirable to appear to have certain attitudes. An example of this is that people can hold implicit prejudicial attitudes, but express explicit attitudes that report little prejudice. Implicit measures help account for these situations and look at attitudes that a person may not be aware of or want to show. Implicit measures therefore usually rely on an indirect measure of attitude. For example, the Implicit Association Test (IAT) examines the strength between the target concept and an attribute element by considering the latency in which a person can examine two response keys when each has two meanings. With little time to carefully examine what the participant is doing they respond according to internal keys. This priming can show attitudes the person has about a particular object. People are often unwilling to provide responses perceived as socially undesirable and therefore tend to report what they think their attitudes should be rather than what they know them to be. More complicated still, people may not even be consciously aware that they hold biased attitudes. Over the past few decades, scientists have developed new measures to identify these unconscious biases.

Optimism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Berlin Wall Monument (west view). The west side of the wall is covered with graffiti that reflects hope and optimism.

 

Optimism is a mental attitude reflecting a belief or hope that the outcome of some specific endeavor, or outcomes in general, will be positive, favorable, and desirable. A common idiom used to illustrate optimism versus pessimism is a glass filled with water to the halfway point: an optimist is said to see the glass as half full, while a pessimist sees the glass as half empty. 

The term derives from the Latin optimum, meaning "best". Being optimistic, in the typical sense of the word, is defined as expecting the best possible outcome from any given situation. This is usually referred to in psychology as dispositional optimism. It thus reflects a belief that future conditions will work out for the best.

Theories of optimism include dispositional models, and models of explanatory style. Methods to measure optimism have been developed within both theoretical systems, such as various forms of the Life Orientation Test, for the original definition of optimism, or the Attributional Style Questionnaire designed to test optimism in terms of explanatory style. 

Variation in optimism and pessimism is somewhat heritable and reflects biological trait systems to some degree. It is also influenced by environmental factors, including family environment, with some suggesting it can be learned. Optimism may also be linked to health.

Psychological optimism

Dispositional optimism

An optimist and a pessimist, Vladimir Makovsky, 1893

 

Researchers operationalize the term differently depending on their research. As with any trait characteristic, there are several ways to evaluate optimism, such as the Life Orientation Test (LOT).

Dispositional optimism and pessimism are typically assessed by asking people whether they expect future outcomes to be beneficial or negative (see below). The LOT returns separate optimism and pessimism scores for each individual. Behaviourally, these two scores correlate around r = 0.5. Optimistic scores on this scale predict better outcomes in relationships, higher social status, and reduced loss of well-being following adversity. Health preserving behaviors are associated with optimism while health-damaging behaviors are associated with pessimism.

Some have argued that pessimism and optimism are ends of a single dimension, with any distinction between them reflecting factors such as social desirability. Confirmatory modelling, however, supports a two-dimensional model and the two dimensions predict different outcomes. Genetic modelling confirms this independence, showing that pessimism and optimism are inherited as independent traits, with the typical correlation between them emerging as a result of a general well-being factor and family environment influences.

Explanatory style

Explanatory style is distinct from dispositional theories of optimism. While related to life-orientation measures of optimism, attributional style theory suggests that dispositional optimism and pessimism are reflections of the ways people explain events, i.e., that attributions cause these dispositions. Measures of attributional style distinguish three dimensions among explanations for events: Whether these explanations draw on internal versus external causes; whether the causes are viewed as stable versus unstable; and whether explanations apply globally versus being situationally specific. In addition, the measures distinguish attributions for positive and for negative events.

An optimistic person attributes internal, stable, and global explanations to good things. Pessimistic explanations attribute these traits of stability, globality, and internality to negative events, such as difficulty in relationships. Models of Optimistic and Pessimistic attributions show that attributions themselves are a cognitive style – individuals who tend to focus on the global explanations do so for all types of events, and the styles correlate among each other. In addition to this, individuals vary in how optimistic their attributions are for good events, and on how pessimistic their attributions are for bad events, but these two traits of optimism and pessimism are un-correlated.

There is much debate about the relationship between explanatory style and optimism. Some researchers argue that optimism is simply the lay-term for what researchers know as explanatory style. More commonly, it is found that explanatory style is quite distinct from dispositional optimism, and the two should not be used interchangeably as they are marginally correlated at best. More research is required to "bridge" or further differentiate these concepts.

Origins

Optimistic Personality (modified from)

As with all psychological traits, differences in both dispositional optimism and pessimism  and in attributional style are heritable. Both optimism and pessimism are strongly influenced by environmental factors, including family environment. It has been suggested that optimism may be indirectly inherited as a reflection of underlying heritable traits such as intelligence, temperament and alcoholism. Many theories assume optimism can be learned, and research supports a modest role of family-environment acting to raise (or lower) optimism and lower (or raise) neuroticism and pessimism.

Work utilising brain imaging and biochemistry suggests that at a biological trait level, optimism and pessimism reflect brain systems specialized for the tasks of processing and incorporating beliefs regarding good and bad information respectively.

Assessment

Life Orientation Test

The Life Orientation Test (LOT) was designed by Scheier and Carver (1985) to assess dispositional optimism – expecting positive or negative outcomes, and is one of the more popular tests of optimism and pessimism. There are eight items and four filler items. Four are positive items (e.g. "In uncertain times, I usually expect the best") and four are negative items e.g. "If something can go wrong for me, it will." The LOT has been revised twice—once by the original creators (LOT-R) and also by Chang, Maydeu-Olivares, and D'Zurilla as the Extended Life Orientation Test (ELOT). The Revised Life Orientation Test (LOT-R: Scheier, Carver, & Bridges, 1994) consists of 6 items, each scored on a 5-point scale from "Strongly disagree" to "Strongly agree".

Attributional Style Questionnaire

This Attributional Style Questionnaire (ASQ: Peterson et al. 1982) is based on the explanatory style model of optimism. Subjects read a list of six positive and negative events (e.g. "you have been looking for a job unsuccessfully for some time"), and are asked to record a possible cause for the event. They then rate whether this is internal or external, stable or changeable, and global or local to the event. There are several modified versions of the ASQ including the Expanded Attributional Style Questionnaire (EASQ), the Content Analysis of Verbatim Explanations (CAVE), and the ASQ designed for testing the optimism of children.

Associations with health

Optimism and health are correlated moderately. Optimism has been shown to explain between 5–10% of the variation in the likelihood of developing some health conditions (correlation coefficients between .20 and .30), notably including cardiovascular disease, stroke, and depression.

The relationship between optimism and health has also been studied with regards to physical symptoms, coping strategies and negative affect for those suffering from rheumatoid arthritis, asthma, and fibromyalgia. 

It has been found that among individuals with these diseases, optimists are not more likely than pessimists to report pain alleviation due to coping strategies, despite differences in psychological well-being between the two groups. A meta-analysis has confirmed the assumption that optimism is related to psychological well-being: "Put simply, optimists emerge from difficult circumstances with less distress than do pessimists." Furthermore, the correlation appears to be attributable to coping style: "That is, optimists seem intent on facing problems head-on, taking active and constructive steps to solve their problems; pessimists are more likely to abandon their effort to attain their goals."

Optimists may respond better to stress: pessimists have shown higher levels of cortisol (the "stress hormone") and trouble regulating cortisol in response to stressors. Another study by Scheier examined the recovery process for a number of patients that had undergone surgery. The study showed that optimism was a strong predictor of the rate of recovery. Optimists achieved faster results in "behavioral milestones" such as sitting in bed, walking around, etc. They also were rated by staff as having a more favorable physical recovery. In a 6-month later follow-up, it was found that optimists were quicker to resume normal activities.

Optimism and well-being

A number of studies have been done on optimism and psychological well-being. One study conducted by Aspinwall and Taylor (1990) assessed incoming freshmen on a range of personality factors such as optimism, self-esteem, locus of self-control, etc. It was found that freshmen who scored high on optimism before entering college were reported to have lower levels of psychological distress than their more pessimistic peers, while controlling for the other personality factors. Over time, the more optimistic students were less stressed, less lonely, and less depressed than their pessimistic counterparts. Thus, this study suggests a strong link between optimism and psychological well-being. 

In addition low optimism may help explain the association between caregivers' anger and reduced sense of vitality.

A recent meta-analysis of optimism supported past findings that optimism is positively correlated with life satisfaction, happiness, psychological and physical well-being and negatively correlated with depression and anxiety.

Seeking to explain the correlation, researchers find that optimists choose healthier lifestyles. For example, optimists smoke less, are more physically active, consume more fruit, vegetables and whole-grain bread, and are more moderate in alcohol consumption.

Translating association into modifiability

Research to date has demonstrated that optimists are less likely to have certain diseases or develop certain diseases over time. By comparison, research has not yet been able to demonstrate the ability to change an individual's level of optimism through psychological interventions, and thereby alter the course of disease or likelihood for development of disease. Though in that same vein, an article by Mayo Clinic argues steps to change self-talk from negative to positive may shift individuals from a negative to a more positive/optimistic outlook. Strategies claimed to be of value include surrounding oneself with positive people, identifying areas of change, practicing positive self-talk, being open to humor, and following a healthy lifestyle. There is also the notion of "learned optimism" in positive psychology, which holds that joy is a talent that can be cultivated and can be achieved through specific actions such as the challenging negative self talk or overcoming "learned helplessness".

There are researchers in a study involving twins found that optimism is largely inherited at birth. Along with the recognition that childhood experiences determines an individual's outlook, such study demonstrating the genetic basis for optimism reinforces the recognized difficulty in changing or manipulating the direction of an adult's disposition from pessimist to optimist.

Philosophical optimism

Distinct from a disposition to believe that things will work out, there is a philosophical idea that, perhaps in ways that may not be fully comprehended, the present moment is in an optimum state. This view that all of nature - past, present, and future - operates by laws of optimization along the lines of Hamilton's principle in the realm of physics is countered by views such as idealism, realism, and philosophical pessimism. Philosophers often link the concept of optimism with the name of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, who held that we live in the best of all possible worlds (le meilleur des mondes possibles), or that God created a physical universe that applies the laws of physics. 

Leibniz proposed that it was not in God's power to create a perfect world, but among possible worlds, he created the best. In one of his writings, he responded to the Blaise Pascal's philosophy of awe and desperation in the face of the infinite by claiming that infinity should be celebrated. While Pascal advocated for making man's rational aspirations more humble, Leibniz was optimistic about the capacity of human reason to further extend itself. This idea was famously mocked by Voltaire in his satirical novel Candide as baseless optimism of the sort exemplified by the beliefs of one of its characters Dr. Pangloss, which are the opposite of his fellow traveller Martin's pessimism and emphasis on free will. The optimistic position is also called Panglossianism and became an adjective for excessive, even stupendous, optimism. The phrase "panglossian pessimism" has been used to describe the pessimistic position that, since this is the best of all possible worlds, it is impossible for anything to get any better. Conversely, philosophical pessimism might be associated with an optimistic long-term view because it implies that no change for the worse is possible.

Optimalism

Philosophical optimalism, as defined by Nicholas Rescher, holds that this universe exists because it is better than the alternatives. While this philosophy does not exclude the possibility of a deity, it also doesn't require one, and is compatible with atheism. Rescher explained that the concept can stand on its own feet, arguing that there is no necessity to seeing optimalism realization as divinely instituted because it is a naturalistic theory in principle.

Psychological optimalism, as defined by the positive psychologist Tal Ben-Shahar, means willingness to accept failure while remaining confident that success will follow, a positive attitude he contrasts with negative perfectionism. Perfectionism can be defined as a persistent compulsive drive toward unattainable goals and valuation based solely in terms of accomplishment. Perfectionists reject the realities and constraints of human ability. They cannot accept failures, delaying any ambitious and productive behavior in fear of failure again. This neuroticism can even lead to clinical depression and low productivity. As an alternative to negative perfectionism, Ben-Shahar suggests the adoption of optimalism. Optimalism allows for failure in pursuit of a goal, and expects that while the trend of activity is towards the positive, it is not necessary to always succeed while striving towards goals. This basis in reality prevents the optimalist from being overwhelmed in the face of failure.

Optimalists accept failures and also learn from them, which encourages further pursuit of achievement. Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar believes that Optimalists and Perfectionists show distinct different motives. Optimalists tend to have more intrinsic, inward desires, with a motivation to learn, while perfectionists are highly motivated by a need to consistently prove themselves worthy.