A recent seminar speaker discussed factors involved in the psychology of happiness. According to him, optimists and pessimists react respectively to a bad and good event by thinking that it's:

• personal
• permanent
• pervasive

That is, when something unpleasant occurs a pessimist feels, "It's me, and it will always be this way, everywhere." An optimist believes that about something pleasant. In the converse situation, if something good happens to a pessimist s/he dismisses it as not connected to personal virtue, not likely to recur, and not universal. An optimist shrugs off misfortunes likewise.

_{(cf. Optimist Creed (1999-04-16), Thank Goodness (2002-12-25), Optimistic Pessimism (2003-03-19), Great and Noble Tasks (2007-06-30), ...) - ^z - 2009-04-27}