Hello. This is 6 Minute English from BBC Learning English.
I’m Neil.
And I’m Sam.
We often hear phrases such as, ‘dream big’
or, ‘reach for the stars’ which reflect
an optimistic view of life.
Are you an optimist, Sam?
I hope so!
I try to see the positive side
of life, even when something bad happens.
It sounds like you’re a glass-half-full person –
someone who always thinks
that good things will happen.
How about you, Neil?
Are you optimistic?
Look, things go wrong all the time -
that’s a fact of life.
Call me a pessimist
if you like but I’m just being realistic.
Hmm, it sounds like Neil is more
of a glass-half-empty person, but the
truth is that the age-old debate between
optimism and pessimism is
more complex than we think.
Yes, whether you’re a sunny
optimist or a gloomy pessimist may
be determined more by your birthplace
and your age than your attitude, as we’ll
be finding out in this programme.
Great. I’ve got a good feeling about this, Neil!
But first, as usual, I have a question for you, Sam.
Psychologists define optimism as an attitude
which overestimates the chances of good
things happening to you, while underestimating
the chances of bad things occurring.
So, what proportion of the British population,
do you think, describe themselves as optimistic?
Is it: a) 20 percent?
b) 50 percent?
or, c) 80 percent?
I’ll choose the largest – 80 percent…
OK, Sam. We’ll find out if your optimistic
answer is the correct one later in
the programme.
Someone who probably wouldn’t agree with you,
though, is BBC World Service listener, Hannah.
Hannah grew up in Germany
before moving to the United States.
She thinks Americans tend to be more
optimistic than people back home
in Germany, as she told BBC World Service
programme, CrowdScience:
Well, I think the stereotypical perceptions
of Germans is that we’re quite pessimistic
and that kind of tends to come across
as being a bit of a Debbie Downer,
when in actuality, Germans just tend
to be avid planners for all eventual negative
eventualities as well… so that’s kind of
us being pessimistic but actually being
cautious, as opposed to for example,
what I’ve notice in America that a lot
of people tend to be hyper-optimistic.
I’ve always admired how Americans
tend to be able to sugarcoat everything.
As a stereotypical pessimist,
Hannah sometimes feels like a Debbie Downer.
This expression is American slang for someone who
makes others feel bad by focussing
on the depressing aspects of things.
Americans, on the other hand,
are typically seen as optimists
who tend to sugarcoat things –
make things seem better than they really are.
According to Hannah, many
Americans are hyper-optimistic.
She uses the prefix hyper to say that
there is too much of a certain quality.
Hyper-sensitive people are too sensitive;
a hyper-optimist is too optimistic.
Besides your country of birth, age
is another consideration in the optimism debate.
When we’re young we have our whole life ahead of us,
and it’s easier to optimistically believe
that everything’s going to be alright.
The belief that everything’s
going to be fine is called ‘the optimism bias’.
It isn’t fixed but changes as we age -
something neuroscientist,
Professor Tali Sharot, explained to
BBC World Service programme, CrowdScience:
So it’s quite high in kids and teenagers –
they think, ‘Oh, everything’s going to be fine’, you know,
and then it goes down, down, down
and it hits rock bottom in your midlife
at which point the optimism bias is
relatively small, and then it starts
climbing up again and it’s quite high
in the elderly population, and that
goes absolutely against our view of
the grumpy old man, or woman.
After starting out high in children,
the optimism bias hits rock bottom –
the lowest possible level – in middle age,
often because of work pressures,
family responsibilities or caring for elderly parents.
But optimism seems to increase
again as we get older.
This is surprising
as it goes against the image we have
of the grumpy old man – a phrase to
describe someone who complains a lot,
is moody and gets easily annoyed.
Optimistic women, meanwhile,
can look forward to longer, healthier lives.
Good news for you then, Sam!
But I’m sticking with my pessimism.
If I anticipate things going wrong
I don’t get disappointed when they do!
That’s actually a fairly positive
way of looking at things, Neil, but
I’m not sure if most people would
agree with you – or maybe they would…
It depends on the answer to your question…
Right. I asked Sam what proportion
of British people describe themselves as optimistic.
And optimistically, I said it was c) 80 percent.
Which was… the correct answer!
Of course it was.
Whether you expect good or bad things to happen
to you, you’re probably right.
So why not focus on the sunny side of life, Neil?
That way, you’ve got nothing to lose!
OK, let’s recap the vocabulary
from this programme, Sam.
You’re certainly a glass-half-full person –
someone with an optimistic attitude to life.
And you’re something of a Debbie Downer -
American slang for someone who brings
everyone down by talking about the
negative side of things.
If you sugarcoat something, you
make it appear more positive than it really is.
The prefix hyper is used before
an adjective to show having too
much of that quality, for example
hypercritical means being too critical.
If something hits rock bottom it
reaches its lowest possible level.
And finally, the phrase grumpy old
man can be used to describe someone
who always complains, is intolerant
and gets annoyed easily… a bit like Neil!
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Goodbye for now!
Bye!