Linda Blair

Why it pays to expect the worst

The British, it seems, are a nation of pessimists. When asked in a recent Yougov poll whether they believed the world was getting better or worse, only 12 per cent of UK respondents believed it was improving.

But what’s the reasoning behind this gloomy outlook, and will it make us feel better or worse – today, in particular, as England play their much-anticipated first 2018 World Cup match?

Holding negative expectations about the future is nothing new. Writing more than 150 years ago, Thomas Hardy claimed having a pessimistic outlook meant you could “never lose”. Evidently, he once said it was the only view of life that guaranteed you would never be disappointed.

The evidence, however, challenges Hardy’s view. To fully understand the consequences of always expecting the worst, we need to consider how differing outlooks make us feel – not only after an event takes place, but also before we know the outcome.

Margaret Marshall at Seattle Pacific University and Jonathon Brown at the University of Washington recruited 81 Washington undergraduates and asked them to classify themselves “optimistic” or “pessimistic”. They then gave the participants a series of moderately difficult word association puzzles. Afterwards, they asked everyone to predict how well – or otherwise – they thought they had done.

Next, they gave the participants a second set of puzzles. Half were handed much easier word associations this time, so as a result they did better than they expected. The rest of the volunteers were given a set of extremely difficult puzzles, so they failed to meet their expectations.

Everyone was then asked to rate how they felt about their results. The pessimists – those who’d expected to do badly – felt worse when they received poor results than did those optimists who also did badly, but who had expected to do well. Anticipating the worst, it seems, completely failed to cushion the blow when expectations weren’t met.

A team of researchers led by Sarit Golub of Hunter College, at Harvard University, weighed up the overall consequences for undergraduates who expected either a favourable or an unfavourable test outcome. In a series of both laboratory and field studies, they found – as you would assume – that participants who expected to do well felt better while waiting for their results than those who expected to do badly. However, on receiving their results, the optimists who did badly felt no worse than the pessimists – who also did poorly. Overall, therefore, the optimists fared better.

When considering how you’ll feel overall – both before you know what will happen, as well as after you learn the outcome – an optimistic outlook is clearly preferable. As Golub and her colleagues concluded: “The results suggest that anticipating one’s troubles may be a poor strategy for maximising positive effect.”

Linda Blair is a clinical psychologist. To order her book, The Key to Calm (Hodder & Stoughton), for £12.99, call 0844 871 1514 or visit books.telegraph.co.uk. Watch her give advice at telegraph.co.uk/wellbeing/video/mind-healing