Optimists vs pessimists - 6 Minute English

Hello. This is 6 Minute English from BBC Learning English.

I’m Neil.

And I’m Sam.

We often hear phrases such as, ‘dream big’

or, ‘reach for the stars’ which reflect

an optimistic view of life.

Are you an optimist, Sam?

I hope so!

I try to see the positive side

of life, even when something bad happens.

It sounds like you’re a glass-half-full person –

someone who always thinks

that good things will happen.

How about you, Neil?

Are you optimistic?

Look, things go wrong all the time -

that’s a fact of life.

Call me a pessimist

if you like but I’m just being realistic.

Hmm, it sounds like Neil is more

of a glass-half-empty person, but the

truth is that the age-old debate between

optimism and pessimism is

more complex than we think.

Yes, whether you’re a sunny

optimist or a gloomy pessimist may

be determined more by your birthplace

and your age than your attitude, as we’ll

be finding out in this programme.

Great. I’ve got a good feeling about this, Neil!

But first, as usual, I have a question for you, Sam.

Psychologists define optimism as an attitude

which overestimates the chances of good

things happening to you, while underestimating

the chances of bad things occurring.

So, what proportion of the British population,

do you think, describe themselves as optimistic?

Is it: a) 20 percent?

b) 50 percent?

or, c) 80 percent?

I’ll choose the largest – 80 percent…

OK, Sam. We’ll find out if your optimistic

answer is the correct one later in

the programme.

Someone who probably wouldn’t agree with you,

though, is BBC World Service listener, Hannah.

Hannah grew up in Germany

before moving to the United States.

She thinks Americans tend to be more

optimistic than people back home

in Germany, as she told BBC World Service

programme, CrowdScience:

Well, I think the stereotypical perceptions

of Germans is that we’re quite pessimistic

and that kind of tends to come across

as being a bit of a Debbie Downer,

when in actuality, Germans just tend

to be avid planners for all eventual negative

eventualities as well… so that’s kind of

us being pessimistic but actually being

cautious, as opposed to for example,

what I’ve notice in America that a lot

of people tend to be hyper-optimistic.

I’ve always admired how Americans

tend to be able to sugarcoat everything.

As a stereotypical pessimist,

Hannah sometimes feels like a Debbie Downer.

This expression is American slang for someone who

makes others feel bad by focussing

on the depressing aspects of things.

Americans, on the other hand,

are typically seen as optimists

who tend to sugarcoat things –

make things seem better than they really are.

According to Hannah, many

Americans are hyper-optimistic.

She uses the prefix hyper to say that

there is too much of a certain quality.

Hyper-sensitive people are too sensitive;

a hyper-optimist is too optimistic.

Besides your country of birth, age

is another consideration in the optimism debate.

When we’re young we have our whole life ahead of us,

and it’s easier to optimistically believe

that everything’s going to be alright.

The belief that everything’s

going to be fine is called ‘the optimism bias’.

It isn’t fixed but changes as we age -

something neuroscientist,

Professor Tali Sharot, explained to

BBC World Service programme, CrowdScience:

So it’s quite high in kids and teenagers –

they think, ‘Oh, everything’s going to be fine’, you know,

and then it goes down, down, down

and it hits rock bottom in your midlife

at which point the optimism bias is

relatively small, and then it starts

climbing up again and it’s quite high

in the elderly population, and that

goes absolutely against our view of

the grumpy old man, or woman.

After starting out high in children,

the optimism bias hits rock bottom –

the lowest possible level – in middle age,

often because of work pressures,

family responsibilities or caring for elderly parents.

But optimism seems to increase

again as we get older.

This is surprising

as it goes against the image we have

of the grumpy old man – a phrase to

describe someone who complains a lot,

is moody and gets easily annoyed.

Optimistic women, meanwhile,

can look forward to longer, healthier lives.

Good news for you then, Sam!

But I’m sticking with my pessimism.

If I anticipate things going wrong

I don’t get disappointed when they do!

That’s actually a fairly positive

way of looking at things, Neil, but

I’m not sure if most people would

agree with you – or maybe they would…

It depends on the answer to your question…

Right. I asked Sam what proportion

of British people describe themselves as optimistic.

And optimistically, I said it was c) 80 percent.

Which was… the correct answer!

Of course it was.

Whether you expect good or bad things to happen

to you, you’re probably right.

So why not focus on the sunny side of life, Neil?

That way, you’ve got nothing to lose!

OK, let’s recap the vocabulary

from this programme, Sam.

You’re certainly a glass-half-full person –

someone with an optimistic attitude to life.

And you’re something of a Debbie Downer -

American slang for someone who brings

everyone down by talking about the

negative side of things.

If you sugarcoat something, you

make it appear more positive than it really is.

The prefix hyper is used before

an adjective to show having too

much of that quality, for example

hypercritical means being too critical.

If something hits rock bottom it

reaches its lowest possible level.

And finally, the phrase grumpy old

man can be used to describe someone

who always complains, is intolerant

and gets annoyed easily… a bit like Neil!

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