Analysis Of Optimistic State And Trait

With the boom in positive psychology,researchers have focused more on states and traits that contain positive psychological constructs such as optimism.Optimism is a positive potential in an individual,manifested as an general expectation of a positive outcome in the future.Earlier research has shown that both state optimism and trait optimism are present in individuals,and measurement tools have been developed.However,because of the lack of a measure of state optimism in China,current research on optimism is limited to optimism as a stable personality disposition.In addition,the performance of the optimism scales in measuring state and trait has still not been tested in longitudinal studies,nor has it been possible to separate state optimism from trait optimism in individuals.The study attempts to apply the ideas of latent state-trait theory to the analysis of optimistic states and traits in a longitudinal study.The article contains three studies,Study 1 aims to revise the newly developed State Optimism Measure(SOM)and examine the reliability and validity.Study 2 focused on using statistical models of latent state-trait theory to examine the stable and fluctuating components of optimism measured using the SOM and LOT-R two weeks before,on the day of,and two weeks after the midterm exam.This resulted in the stable and changeable of Optimism across the three measures and the ability of the SOM and LOTR to measure optimistic traits and states.Study 3 used a bivariate latent state-trait model to to build the relationship between optimism and self-esteem counterparts independently from the trait component and the context-specific component.The main results are as follows:(1)The SOM has good reliability and validity in the Chinese junior high school student population,with the same factor structure as the original measure.(2)Whether measured by the SOM or the LOT-R,and by trait variance with individual differences accounting for most of the total variance in the measured data,indicates that optimism is a relatively stable trait-like variable.(3)Both the SOM and LOT-R present a not negligible trait component and a context-specific component in all three measures,but the SOM measures more state optimistic change than the LOT-R.(4)Excluding the variable occasion component,the correlations between optimism and self-esteem trait components were higher than previously found.However,the correlations between optimism variants and self-esteem variants were lower,indicating that the causes of optimism and self-esteem change may be different.