Why do some people just seem to hate everything, while others relish everything with gusto? A new study explores what drives those differing personalities.
Researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the University of Pennsylvania say it boils down to what's called "dispositional attitude," or a personality trait that drives whether or not you're a Debbie Downer or someone who loves everything.
"Optimists tend to have generalized beliefs usually about the future, such as 'Things are going to turn out well,'" study author Justin Hepler told LiveScience. "We were interested in whether people liked or disliked things, in general, and had people report their attitude about different things."
The study involved 2,000 subjects, who read a list of 200 items, anything from sea salt to T-shirts, and rated them 1 to 7, with 1 representing "extremely unfavorable" and 7 representing "extremely favorable." Subjects also completed surveys that tested for potentially overlapping traits, such as optimism/pessimism and extroversion/introversion.
While the subject's dispositional attitudes did often correlate with other traits, they were also statistically different, in that some pessimists like a lot of things while some optimists are more discriminating.
Although there isn't much someone can do to radically alter a personality trait, the results of the study, announced this week, can help people become more aware of their attitudes toward certain things. "For example, a person with a negative disposition might read reviews before watching a movie, focus only on negative reviews, and end up not enjoying the movie either because they were influenced by the negative reviews or simply see themselves as contrary people," LiveScience writes.
"If you like something, you are more likely to do it -- there's no surprise there," Hepler said. "When you combine that with the fact that some people have a tendency to like a lot of things, some people might just do more things overall."