Most of us know someone who seems to be perennially pessimistic about things—a spouse, co-worker or friend. And it’s also true that most of us have an acquaintance or two who is rarely discouraged by anything that comes along. To an observer it looks as if they are on two ends of a continuum, and in some ways that is accurate.

From those who do research into this kind of thing, we’ve learned that such dispositional differences are influenced profoundly by heredity, some say as much 50-80%! Whether on the positive end of the continuum or the negative end (or more likely near the middle), each of us seem to have a dispositional range where we operate. As individuals, we’ve had the experience of trying hard to appear happier and more optimistic (or maybe even more pessimistic) than we really feel, just to get through a situation or event. Or we are up or down for a period of time depending on circumstances. It changes for a little while, but over the long term, we all have a dispositional style that we generally return to. In other words, those with a half-empty perspective can work toward the middle, but they’re probably never going to see the world in the same way as those born with more rose-colored glasses. And those who are higher in optimism may drift lower, but are never going to become a Chicken Little (The sky is falling! The sky is falling!). (more…)

I’ve worn glasses since the third grade. At this point in my life, putting them on is the first thing I do in the morning, and taking them off is the last thing I do at night. My vision is so poor that my glasses are probably the most valuable items I will ever own. Believe me, I’ve gone through enough lens cleaning cloths to blanket a football field. Or so it seems.

People who wear corrective lenses will tell you how lost they’d be without them, and yet all of us—the clear-sighted and the vision-impaired—walk around every day with the dirty lenses of our biases, childhood experience, powerful advertising influences, and a vast assortment of other impediments to clarity. (more…)