Learned Optimism

The chapter opens with a scene: a father looks at his newborn daughter, and the baby does not respond to the sound of the bell. The father at once thinks «the baby is deaf» and spends the whole weekend on it; the mother says she will call the paediatrician and stays calm. The doctor's tests show the baby is healthy, and the father relaxes only a week later, when the baby starts at the noise of a lorry. Seligman adds: this father thinks the worst at every bad event, is prone to depression and has poor health; the mother sees bad events as temporary and surmountable and has excellent health.

The author has been studying optimists and pessimists for twenty-five years. The pessimist's defining feature is believing that bad events will last long, will undermine everything and are his own fault; the optimist interprets the same blow the opposite way: it is temporary, limited to this event, and the cause is circumstance or other people. Hundreds of studies show that pessimists give up more easily and get depressed more often, while optimists do better at school, work and sport and have good health. Seligman stresses: escaping pessimism is possible not by «whistling a happy tune» but by learning new cognitive skills.

At the core of pessimism lies helplessness: a situation in which nothing you choose affects what happens to you. An example: if I promised you a thousand dollars for looking at page 104, you would do it; if I promised it for shrinking the pupil of your eye, you might choose to, but your choice would not matter. Life begins in total helplessness, and personal control grows as the child grows. Most of life is outside our control, but there is a «no man's land»: our way of thinking can either increase or reduce control in this area. Seligman stresses: «pessimistic prophecies are self-fulfilling».

The author tells the story of Elizabeth: a student who had won a scholarship to Oxford is accused of plagiarism by her advisor three days before the oral examination, although those ideas came from the advisor's own conversation. Instead of defending herself Elizabeth collapses saying «it is all my fault», says nothing before the committee and fails; then she works for ten years as a shop assistant. In the author's view, had she thought «I have been wronged», things would have been different. That one can choose a way of thinking has been accepted in psychology since the 1960s; the author links this to the depression «epidemic», the psychoanalytic explanation and its critique.

• The chapter opens with a vivid story (father, mother and baby), and theory comes afterwards
• Abstract concepts («helplessness», «no man's land») are explained with everyday examples
• The Elizabeth story makes the theory concrete with a real human fate
• The author briefly shows the historical background (the shift from behaviourism to cognitive psychology)