This exploratory study was designed to examine the psychological characteristic of dispositional optimism and pessimism in a woman's likelihood of undergoing an unplanned cesarean section delivery in urban China. Dispositional optimism is seen as a relatively stable personality characteristic (a "trait" rather than a "state") that is associated with general assumptions about positive future outcomes. Dispositional pessimism is the converse: it is a tendency to expect the worst when looking toward future outcomes. A meta-analytic review of the optimism literature from 2009 [25] that examined 83 separate studies found a persistent relationship between optimism and positive health outcomes [25] . In addition, women with higher levels of optimism during pregnancy have been found to have to lower levels of stress, anxiety, and peripartum depression than women with lower levels of optimism [26] [27] [28] [29] . Optimism has also been linked to birth outcomes, with one study finding that optimistic women gave birth to larger babies [30] , and a second study finding that when gestational age was controlled for, women who were least optimistic during pregnancy when compared to women with higher levels of optimism delivered smaller infants [31] .