Defensive pessimism
Continuing with the theme of my all-time favorite psychology researchers, we have Professor Julie Norem of Wellesley College for her work on defensive pessimism.
Do you back up your PowerPoint slides on a memory stick before each talk, just in case you lose/break/drop your computer? Do you make a list of nasty questions that someone just might ask and write up the answers on index cards? Do you look up the publication records of the speakers preceding you in your conference session to make sure you didn’t forget to cite any of their major, related works? Well, then you are using a "defensive pessimist" strategy.
The brilliant thing about Norem’s work is that she has quantitatively shown (through controlled experiments) that defensive pessimists are just as successful as their counterparts, so-called "strategic optimists"– you know, the ones who just sort of believe that everything is bound to go to well. However, both groups will do worse than usual if their normal strategy is disturbed. If you interrupt a defensive pessimist’s ability to do last-minute (over?)preparation tasks, his or her performance will suffer. Likewise, if you disturb a strategic optimist from spending his or her last minutes before a high-pressure test "relaxing" blissfully, his or her performance will also go down.
The most important implication of this work? Anxiety and self-doubt do not necessarily compromise performance.
Find out more here:
- Are you a defensive pessimist? Take the quiz at Norem’s website.
- CNN review of her book, "The Positive Power of Negative Thinking: Using Defensive Pessimism To Harness Anxiety and Perform at Your Peak"
- Article in the University of Chicago’s alumni magazine
