Optimism with specific criteria has been associated with political victories.
Dr. Martin Seligman (Learned Optimism, 1990, with newer editions available) started to notice and then began to quantify the speech of politicians (and eventually sports figures) for three traits he related to optimism.
For the optimist, one's problems are:
1. not personal (ie, are caused factors outside your control)
2. temporary
3. not pervasive (a problem in one area of life does not mean all of life sucks)
People can be strong in any or all of these traits, there's a range.
The contrast is that pessimists see their problems as:
1. Personal (I suck)
2. Permanent (The suck will continue)
3. Pervasive (My entire life sucks)
Also, optimists see their successes as personally driven, ongoing (I'm on a roll!) and pervasive, while pessimists see their success as accidental, temporary, limited.
This powerpoint breaks it down nicely.
Pessimism has its place. Seligman is careful to cover the need for it when in crisis. Certain careers like finance benefit more from pessimism, whereas sales benefits from optimism.
He wants people to have more tools in their kit, not just optimism as a hammer that transforms all nuts, bolts, and screws into nails. For applicability to politics and other team sports, swing over the optimistically orange filigree.
Seligman and other researchers were able to quantify optimism/pessimism from word choice based on direct quotes from candidates, and eventually athletes and their coaches, and were able to predict electoral and sporting event wins with great success. For sports teams after losing a game, if their players and coaches described the loss in optimistic terms (not our fault, temporary, limited to that game), they tended to win the next game. Vice verse, pessimistic teams had losing streaks. This is discussed in a chapter of Learned Optimism.
Alas, I'm not sure how to get ahold of Seligman's research article focused on politics: [H. M. Zullow and M. E. P. Seligman, “Pessimistic Rumination Predicts Defeat of Presidential Candidates, 1900–1984,” Psychological Inquiry 1, no. 1 (1990): 52– 61.]
From a random dissertation I found:
The assessment of personality and motivational factors has also been applied to predict electoral success (Winter, 1987; Zullow & Seligman, 1990). Zullow and Seligman (1990) assessed pessimistic rumination (i.e., pessimistic explanatory style and rumination about bad events) of Democratic and Republican candidates based on their nomination acceptance speeches. The results of the study showed that the candidate who was a more pessimistic ruminator lost nine out of ten elections from 1948 to 1984 and nine out of twelve elections from 1900 to 1944. The study suggested that voters prefer optimistic and active candidates and that hope is a significant predictor of election outcomes.
I've
put money on Bernie Sanders being an optimist per Seligman's definition. The optimist we need
right now.
We CAN improve America's situation. (Our setbacks need not be permanent.) WE can improve it. (Bernie's asking for our help, he knows it'll take more than just him, and he knows that a millions-plus strong team has the power to effect real change.) And with a strong team of millions of proactive Americans, he knows the results will pervade the country. Lots of dominos can fall nicely, if we join the effort.
Learned Optimism is a great read, includes background on "learned helplessness", how optimism combats depression, a self-test, caveats for the limitations of optimism, and a section on steps to learn and practice optimistic thinking. And if you're a busy parent who doesn't have the time to read a medium-size book, Seligman streamlines the concepts and adds kid-friendly exercises to a related fast-read book: The Optimistic Child.
Conversely, if you want a book that offers graduate level course depth and quantification, Dr. Seymour Epstein's Constructive Thinking incorporates Seligman's work and drills down further on how to update one's thinking to see more potential and opportunity, without veering into "magical thinking".