Optimism vs. Pessimism

This debate is essentially between defensive pessimism and strategic optimism. This is because absolute pessimism and its counterpart absolute optimism are equally flawed. To roughly "define" these: Defensive pessimism is a strategy used by anxious people to help them manage their anxiety so they can work productively. Defensive pessimists lower their expectations to help prepare themselves for the worst. Then, they mentally play through all the bad things that might happen. Though it sounds as if it might be depressing, defensive pessimism actually helps anxious people focus away from their emotions so that they can plan and act effectively. Strategic optimism is typically used by people who aren't anxious. Individuals using this strategy set high expectations, and then actively avoid thinking much about what might happen. http://academics.wellesley.edu... Many studies have been done on which is better, specifically physical health, and whatever you find on one is contradicted by the other. This made me question, which is truly better? Now, we will not only be looking at physical affects. I will separate my arguments into numbered point but may draw conclusions between them. 1. Defensive pessimism is widely used by everyone. Whether you are aware of it or not, defensive pessimism, which is evaluating all of the things that could go wrong, is a widely used practice. Going on a vacation? Plan extra time for baggage troubles or a slow down at security. Have an important meeting? Visit the office or inquire beforehand to know how to get there. Have that big football game next weekend? Stay away from risky activities and focus on prevention. These are all fairly common examples of assessing risks and avoiding them. On the other hand strategic optimism isn't so widely used. This is mostly for the reason that a good amount of people believe optimism to be naive. The most common way that strategic optimism is used is to get oneself to pursue something you wouldn't have with pessimistic thoughts. But I call to question if this is actually the pragmatic way of thinking? 2. Defensive pessimism is more pragmatic. A great segue from my last point. I will concede that SO (strategic optimism) does have a leg up on DP (defensive pessimism) where there is nothing major on the line. Allow me to use an example. You were given 3 free tries to the crane game at the arcade, which seems more reasonable? a. Take advantage of this offer and possibly win something free of charge or b. Shrug off the free tries because the machine is rigged in favor of the manufacturer not the user. Of course a. would be the better and more pragmatic option but when looking at something you would face in everyday life with things "on the line," we can see that DP is clearly better. All I have to do to show this is simple, those tickets now cost one dollar a piece. Which is still the most reasonable? DP trumps now as the odds are clearly against you. Now let's apply it to a real world situation. Apartment hunting! You tour an apartment that is pretty good, nice price and space, but isn't in the best location. You decide that it's worthwhile for various unimportant reasons. Unfortunately there is only one apartment available and August is coming around soon in your college town, which means the offer won't be prone to last long. You can tour other apartments of the same management company that are in a better location but may lose this offer. DP would take the offer at hand instead of risking already good pricing and space. On the other hand SO would probably pass up this offer and risk losing it for the chance of "winning the apartment lottery" and getting a good price, space, and location. DP takes into account all known factors and makes a decision based on that. Of course there will be the 5% of cases where SO would be better, but playing your odds is risky and foolhardy. 3. Defensive pessimism has more benefits. Consider these fields as possible areas of advantage/disadvantage for DP and SO: Physical Health Mental Health Success While evaluating the physical health the science is very contradictory, like I stated in my introduction, because both sides claim the other increase anxiety. But if we look at the uses of either we see that DP clearly reduces more anxiety. DP, as stated in the definition above, I generally used to decrease anxiety around something needing to be done because it evaluates all the potential pitfalls that can reasonably be addressed. SO is something that people with low anxiety can use because it simply dismisses the potential pitfalls that may happen. In this regard, I would claim that DP prevents more health problems than SO but the people practicing DP may be "unhealthier" physically because they still have more anxiety than their counterparts. When drawing conclusion of mental health it is clear that DP should be advocated for more than SO. DP has a higher net decrease in anxiety than SO. Refer to my physical health argumentation for analysis. Success. One of the hardest things to evaluate as far as single variables go. Yet I would argue that DP is the clear breadwinner. Success is hampered by an excess of anxiety, yet a healthy amount of anxiety causes success. The DP attitude of addressing the possible setbacks against the SO attitude of dismissing pitfalls as out of their control shows clearly that DP is the more dependably successful. 4. The pragmatic curve When we assess the usefulness of DP and SO levels on a curve we can see that DP is more useful more often. I would argue that SO starts off useful and gradually increases as SO use increases. However, once at a certain point even SO starts to get naive and ignores things that can be changed. This is, of course, harmful to success. SO is needed to thwart anxiety directly before or during that anxiety provoking event, which causes less fumbles and such because you aren't a stammering and anxiety ridden mess. However, when SO is used prematurely or to an extreme extent it is more harmful and less helpful that DP in the same situations. DP's curve is different. It starts off lower than SO, admittedly, but spikes exponentially until it gets to the extreme. This is because a low amount of preparedness is caused by low amounts of DP, due to not seeing or overlooking some potential pitfalls while high amounts of preparedness is the key to success. In the even that DP is used extremely or prematurely it still has lower net detriment that SO. Extreme DP is anxiety provoking, thus defeating the purpose, by worrying about things you no longer have control over. I am essentially arguing that anxious and well prepared is much better than confident and ill prepared. DP is hard to use prematurely because one could stress about the problem before it even comes to be that problem but even then you can set a plan of action in place to deal with it. Something that I've noticed is DP is used in preparing for that big presentation or game or what have you in the weeks/days/however much time you have to get everything ready, while SO is used when you are about to do said activities. What we can conclude from this observation is that DP is what gets things done while SO dismisses what might happen that we don't necessarily have control over. In conclusion, we have explored the world of defensive pessimism and strategic optimism. We've looked into the pros and cons of both and drawn the conclusion that the former has a higher net benefit and a lower net detriment. Although, outliers do exist and in the rare cases they are the only way you are going to achieve something then strategic optimism is the best. Sources that I used, note that I did not take anything in these as facts but merely interpretations of either, which is really the only thing one can do in philosophy: https://blog.todoist.com... http://academics.wellesley.edu... https://www.psychologytoday.com... http://www.returnofkings.com... http://www.medicaldaily.com... http://www.shape.com...