Not all people are optimists. The opposite of optimism is pessimism.
Pessimistic people explain their life events in the opposite manner to optimists.
Developed by Martin Seligman, the analysis of optimism as related to attributional theory extends the discussion made during the social development lectures by adding a 3rd dimension to the ones mentioned at that time. Optimists and pessimists differ in that they explain life events differently. The more pessimistic people are the more likely they are to suffer set-backs when bad things happen in their lives. Bad events will hit pessimists harder than optimists and pessimists will be suffer longer after experiencing a bad event than optimists. A sales job with one of the highest levels of negative responses is life insurance sales.