Information Processing Biases In Dispositional Optimistic Undergraduates

In recent years, dispositional optimism is one of the hot spots of positive psychology. It's defined as the overall expectation of the positive results for all events, what the individual has formed in the interaction with his social and cultural environment. Numerous studies shows that dispositional optimism is the main reason for high achievement. It can affect individuals to respond to stressful events effectively, also to adapt to the environment. It's the important internal resource of the regulation of mental health. Most of previous researches focused on the exploration of dispositional optimism's structure and correlation about other variables, while few researches were involved in social information processing. So this research propose that there are some cognitive bias of dispositional optimistic undergraduates. The bias exists not only in information coding phase, but also in attribution phase and retrieval phase. This research included three parts. The first was designed to explore the attention bias to the words with positive meanings in dispositional optimistic undergraduates by the way of"dot-probe task"; the second was learned that there are bias of recalling in dispositional optimistic undergraduates; the third was discussed that there are some bias of attribution and explanation in dispositional optimistic undergraduates by self-assessment questionnaire.Several conclusions had been drawn by research:(1)There are the attention bias to the words with positive meanings in dispositional optimistic undergraduates, and the different is significant between optimist and pessimist. The different of the attention to negative words between optimists and pessimists is not significant.(2)Dispositional optimistic undergraduates memorize more words with positive meanings, and the different is significant between optimist and pessimist. The different of the recalling to negative words between optimists and pessimists is not significant.(3)Dispositional optimistic undergraduates used more positive attribution than pessimists. They attributed the negative events to be external, temporary and partial.In a word, this research discussed different information processing phases, enriching and developing research about dispositional optimism. This paper not only showed the interior cognitive traits on person who is dispositional optimistic, but provided theories and instructions for mental health education of optimistic personality.