How well we express our feelings has important implications for how we get along
with others. In particular, the more people express their emotions, the fewerproblems they have in romantic relationships (Cordova, Gee, & Warren, 2005;
Lavee & Ben-Ari, 2004; Noller, 1984). Communication is aided when partners
understand what the other person is feeling, and communication almost always
contributes to harmony and satisfaction in relationships. Moreover, people who
express their emotions freely tend to experience less confusion when trying to read
another person ’s emotions (King, 1998).
Expressing emotions also seems to be good for our psychological health.
Participants in one study completed a series of well-being measures and keptdaily records of their moods for 21 consecutive days (King & Emmons,1990). The participants identified as highly expressive were happier and expe-
rienced less anxiety and guilt than those who were low in expressiveness.
Other researchers using similar procedures found that expressive people wereless prone to depression (Katz & Campbell, 1994). Highly expressive people
also tend to be higher in self-esteem than those on the other end of this trait
dimension (Friedman et al., 1980). In short, emotional expressiveness is goodfor us. In Chapter 12 we ’ll return to some of the reasons for this relation
between well-being and expressing one ’s emotions.
OPTIMISM AND PESSIMISM
For many years researchers have recognized that a positive outlook is related
to high achievement and a positive mood (Taylor, 1989). People who ap-
proach an upcoming event believing they will do well tend to perform better
and feel better about themselves than those who enter the situation thinking
things will likely turn out poorly. Similarly, when people face a specific prob-
lem, those who believe they will beat the odds tend to do better and feel bet-
ter than those who think the odds will beat them. Heart transplant patients inone study were asked about their expectations prior to the surgery (Leedham,
Meyerowitz, Muirhead, & Frist, 1995). Those with positive expectations did
a much better job of adjusting to life after the surgery than those with amore pessimistic outlook.
But optimism and pessimism aren ’t simply tied to specific events or pro-
blems. Rather, like the other traits reviewed in this chapter, psychologists canidentify individual differences in the manner in which we typically approach
life’s challenges (Scheier & Carver, 1985). We can place people on a contin-
uum ranging from those who look at life in the most optimistic light to those
who view the world through the most pessimistic lenses. Because people
are relatively consistent in the extent to which they adopt one of these view-
points, researchers sometimes refer to this personality variable as disposi-
tional optimism.
When researchers compare people high in dispositional optimism with
those who are not, they usually find clear advantages for the optimists.
People who take an optimistic approach to life tend to achieve more than
those who don ’t (Crane & Crane, 2007; Brown & Marshall, 2001;
Segerstrom, 2007). Optimists set their goals higher, effectively prioritize their212 CHAPTER 8 The Trait Approach