Defensive Pessimism

Definition

Defensive pessimism is a strategy people can use to manage their anxiety. Those who use the strategy feel anxious and out of control as they think about an upcoming situation. In response to those feelings, they set pessimistic expectations about how things will go, and they mentally rehearse all the things they can think of that might happen. Thinking in specific and vivid terms about things that might go wrong helps these individuals focus on what they can do to prevent the disasters they imagine.

Defensive pessimism is an example of an affect regulation strategy. These strategies describe the ways that people try to handle their emotions in everyday life. The strategy of defensive pessimism prevents anxiety from interfering with what individuals want to accomplish, and those who use the strategy typically perform well.

Varieties of Pessimism

Defensive pessimism is different from other kinds of pessimism, such as dispositional pessimism (also known as trait pessimism) and attributional pessimism (which focuses on how people interpret past negative events). Dispositional pessimism refers to the general tendency to have negative expectations about future events, while attributional pessimism refers to whether you think past negative events were caused by internal, stable, and global factors (i.e., the causes were internal to you, they won't change over time, and they'll affect everything). Both of these kinds of pessimism exert a general influence on behavior in most situations. In contrast, defensive pessimism is more specific and more focused on the process that describes how individuals' expectations in a particular situation are connected to what they do. Defensive pessimism and other affect regulation strategies are similar to coping strategies, except that they do not typically refer to how people cope with particular external events or crises (e.g., bereavement or severe illness). Instead, they focus on everyday thoughts, feelings, and motivations, such as how a person deals with feeling anxious before giving a speech or meeting a blind date. If an individual has different goals or different feelings or a different outlook in one kind of [Page 232]situation than in another, this perspective would predict that the individual would use different strategies in those different situations. Thus, a person might use defensive pessimism in work-related situations but not in social situations, or vice versa.

How Defensive Pessimism Works

Students are sometimes anxious about their exams. Students using defensive pessimism would be likely to convince themselves that they were certain to fail miserably on the next test. A defensive pessimist would then imagine discovering incredibly hard questions that refer to obscure facts, or sitting down to take the test and being unable to remember anything. This negative thinking helps those using defensive pessimism to figure out what they need to do to prevent the bad things that they have played through in their minds from actually happening. The thinking-through process accomplishes two things. It motivates defensive pessimists to focus on action instead of their anxious feelings, and because the process is typically detailed and specific, it functions as a guide to planning effective action. Potentially intimidating goals (e.g., “do well on a really hard exam”) are broken into smaller, concrete steps (e.g., “gather all the reference materials at your desk”) that are less intimidating and easier to accomplish. Defensive pessimism is similar to some of the techniques that clinicians and counselors use to help anxious people or those who are troubled by procrastination or lack of motivation.

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