BOOKS ON OPTIMISM SERIES

SELIGMAN: They expected that there was nothing they could do, so they didn't try. Essentially, Seligman put dogs in a situation where they got an uncomfortable electric shock they could do nothing about and found that the dogs became so conditioned that even when they were put into a new situation where there was a clear and unambiguous opportunity to escape, they still didn't do anything.

BOOKS ON OPTIMISM SERIES

In the '70s, he did a series of experiments on dogs, which demonstrated what he called learned helplessness. Seligman came to research on optimism through a strange back door. SPIEGEL: This is Martin Seligman, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania. But there is a completely different way to think about it. SPIEGEL: We tend to think of optimism as a personality trait, something you're born with or maybe born without. But even for him, quite literally an avowed optimist, there have been moments when it's been hard to live the Optimist Creed.įRATANGELO: When my 1-year-old and my 2-year-old are both screaming and I have a conference call and so does my wife, it's not my most optimistic moment. Like so many people, Fratangelo's been sheltering at home with his family. The group raises money for schools and homeless shelters. It got started after the First World War, when people really needed some optimism, and now has more than half a million members in 20 countries. SPIEGEL: For close to 100 years, this creed has been repeated by countless members of a group called Optimist International. JAKE FRATANGELO: To be strong so that nothing can disturb your peace of mind, to be just as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are about your own, to be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear, and too happy to permit the presence of trouble. To say, I'm an optimist, is to say that you're someone committed to hope and progress, the sunny side of a complicated world, which brings me to Jake Fratangelo and the Optimist Creed. So NPR's Alix Spiegel decided to ask, can we choose it?ĪLIX SPIEGEL, BYLINE: There's so much packed into the simple word optimist, a whole galaxy of complicated meanings and judgments. But optimism, particularly right now, can be hard to come by. There's a lot of research showing that optimism is correlated with all kinds of good outcomes like increased life expectancy, better recovery rates from heart operations, even success in work.

Books on optimism