Research On The Relationship Between Social Support And Optimism Of Undergraduates

Positive affection experience and positive personality have been issues of considerable interest to scholars since Seligman proposed a construct of positive Psychology in the 1980s. It contains many important concepts, such as self-regulation, happiness, subjective well-being, fluency, optimism,hope,etc. As a core construct, optimism has been played an important role in positive psychology field.Optimism is taken to mean the general expectancy of positive outcomes (Scheier, 1986). Based on review of related concepts, theories and development of optimism , this paper mainly involved two issues. In the first place, we drew up an optimism questionnaire through open questionnaire, forecast, and formal test. In the second place, we investigated 563 Chinese undergraguates to explore the relationship of support and optimism. Three questions were studied in this paper. Firstly, we studied optimism questionnaire internal construct in the background of Chinese culture; secondly, we discussed optimism differences of demographic variables; Finally, we explored relationship of social supports and optimism. The main research results are listed as follows:Firstly, optimism questionnaire includes three subquestionnaire: individual optimism subquestionnaire, which contains two dimensions of individual optimism orientation and individual pessimism orientation; social optimism subquestionnaire, which has two dimensions of life and ecological optimism; self-efficiency subquestionnaire, which construct is a single dimension. These questionnaires have satisfactory reliability and validity.Secondly, multiple differences in gender, grade, major, single child or non-single child have been founded on each dimension of optimism, except family background. Female students were higher than male students in the scores of life optimism dimension, while Male students was higher than Female students in the scores self-efficacy optimism subquestionnaire. Liberal art students had higher scores than science students on personal optimism subquestionnaire, social optimism subquestionnaire, ecological optimism dimension and personal optimism dimension. Non-single child was higher than single child in life optimism dimension scores. Respectively, junior had higher sores than senior on personal optimism subquestionnaire, social optimism subquestionnaire and ecological optimism dimension, freshman and junior were higher than senior, junior was higher than sophomore on personal optimism subquestionnaire. while sophomore,junior were higher than freshman on self-efficacy optimism subquestionnaire.Thirdly, positive correlation is found between social support and individual optimism in this sample of undergraguates. Subjective support and objective support can significantly predict individual optimism beyond demographic variables. Fourthly, social support is significantly positively correlated with social optimism. Objective support is a significantly predictive index on social optimism beyond demographic variables.Finally, social support and self-efficiency have significant positive correlation. Subjective support, objective support and support availability can predict self-efficiency optimism significantly beyond demographic variables.