Optimism as a personal resource for coping in demanding situations

Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject Sport - Sport Sociology, grade: 1,0, Otto-von-Guericke-University Magdeburg (Sportwissenschaft), course: Sportcoaching , language: English, abstract: Abstract

Objective: The aim of the present paper is to explain the construct of optimism in relation to coping strategies. Furthermore, we researched about the possibilities to improve situational optimism in a notional case study.

Method: Transactional theory of stress and coping by Lazarus (1982) is the initial point of this paper. We explained appraisal and coping processes and pointed out, that optimism is a needful resource to overcome demanding situations. In the following notional case study, with a young wrestler we used the Life Orientation Test (Scheier & Carver, 1994) and the CAVE-Technique to analyze optimism status. Afterwards we generated hermeneutic ideas to improve the given situational optimism status.

Results: A four stadium model, including reflection-, confirmation-, implementation- and re-evaluation phase was created to increase situational optimism. With this, it was possible to reach higher control abilities and optimism.

Conclusions: Situational optimism is improvable with the help of the given model. Therefore it is important to re-appraise the outcome to develop adaptation and transformation. Probably it is possible to transfuse situational optimism to dispositional optimism.