Life Change and the Postoperative Course of Duodenal Ulcer Patients

The Costs and Benefits of Optimistic Explanations and Dispositional Optimism

“…Generalized outcome expectancies play a pivotal role in Scheier and Carver's formulation of the influence of optimism on health Expectancies are also key in Peterson and Sehgman's explanation of how explanatory style may make one vulnerable to illness Psterson and Sehgman (cf Abramson, Seligman, & Teasdale, 1978, Alloy, 1982 state "In our research, we have usually measured explanatory style rather than expectations per se However, we believe that explanatory style is important because it affects one's expectations about helplessness" (p 241) Scheier and Carver similarly state "Our laboratory research has gener-ally bome out the importance of expectancies as determinants of behavior "(p 170) The evidence makes it difficult to disagree with the notion that generalized outcome expectancies influence subsequent behavior and health But we believe that a more complete understanding of the link between personality and health requires moving beyond generalized expectancies We assert that the nature of a person's life expenences will influence his or her attnbutions, generalized expectations, and health We propose that the meaning one ascnbes to an expenence may exert a powerful influence on both behavior and health, and that this influence may be independent of the influence exerted by expectancies An important source of a person's generalized outcome expectancies IS the actual events he or she expenences While expectancies themselves influence some of the aversive events people face, it seems fair to say that many aversive events occur independently of expectancies In fact, the concept of leamed helplessness rests on the notion that the generalized expectancy of response-outcome independence follows exposure to real noncontingent outcomes We believe that the nature of one's life expenences may be a "third factor" that predicts global-stable attnbutions for bad events, pessimistic expectancies, and poor health Consider a person who expenenced misfortunes that occurred over time and across many domains If we employed the CAVE technique, we suspect that this person would make intemal, stable, and global attnbutions for these events that have been consistent over time and across situations (cf Abramson etal , 1978, Kelley, 1973 In view of all of these aversive events, we would not be surpnsed if this person scored on the pessimistic end of the Life Onentation Test (Scheier & Carver, 1985) Would this person also be susceptible to illness'' Despite significant methodological and measurement problems in the life events literature (Tennen, Affleck, & Herzberger, 1985), the convergent evidence points to a consistent link between exposure to aversive events and subsequent health Life changes have been associated with subsequent myocardial infarction (Holmes & Masuda, 1973), duodinal ulcer (Stevenson, Nasbeth, Masuda, & Holmes, 1979), magnitude of rhmovirus infection (Totman, Kiff, Reed, & Craig, 1980), and other illnesses (Gamty, Marx, and Somes, 1977) Before asserting causal pnorlty to expectancies, it may be important to consider the reality of people's existence in determining their attnbutions, expectations, and health (See Brown &Hams, 1981, and…”