A Research On The Coping Style Of Defensive Pessimists And The Influence Of Reflectivity

Although defensive pessimism is in the name of pessimism, but it is quite different from pessimism. The two concepts belong to two different categories. Defensive pessimism is a cognitive strategy, while optimism-pessimism is a personality trait. Defensive pessimists usually set unrealistic negative expectations in stress situations, and reflect on all the details and results that may occur.Defensive pessimism is defined as a kind of cognitive strategy which can help individuals cope with stress effectively and get better results of the task. This study aimed to explore how the two factors of defensive pessimism(negative expectations and reflectivity) could help the defensive pessimists cope with stress effectively and positively. Besides, in order to find out the nature of defensive pessimists’ reflectivity,we were also interested in exploring the effects of different types of reflectivity on the task performance of the defensive pessimists.In study1a survey was carried out to test386freshmen in a high school. We collected the data of subjects’defensive pessimism, coping style and dispositional optimism-pessimism. The relationship between dispositional optimism-pessimism, negative expectations, reflect and coping was studied.We found that optimism positively predicted problem-oriented coping; negative expectation played an intermediary role between them, which negatively predicted the problem-oriented coping; Reflectivity negatively mediated the intermediation. Pessimism negatively predicted problem-oriented coping; negative expectation played an intermediary role between them, which negatively predicted the problem-oriented coping; Reflectivity negatively mediated the intermediation. High level of negative expectation combining with high level of reflectivity was the key to positive coping.In study2we performed an experiment. Typical defensive pessimists and strategic optimists were chosen as subjects, In order to find out whether different types of reflectivity have different impact on different strategy users when they have to complete a test, the subjects were separately manipulated to reflect on the test negatively, positively, comprehensively, or be distracted before the test began.We found that there were significant interaction on the subjects’ task performance among gender, reflectivity types and the two strategies. More specifically, on one hand,no reflectivity would count against the implementation of defensive pessimism strategy for male subjects; as for female subjects, positive reflectivity would count against the implementation of the defensive pessimism strategy. On the other hand, no reflectivity could be beneficial to the implementation of strategic optimism strategy for male subjects; as for female subjects, positive reflectivity could be beneficial to the implementation of strategic optimism strategy.