Optimism, coping style and emotional well‐being in cardiac patients

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: Optimism is associated with superior emotional well-being in people with chronic and acute health problems, possibly because optimists are more likely to implement problem-focused coping. Another interpretation posits that optimism can be a defensive response designed to diminish affective reactions to health problems. The study objective is to investigate this possibility. DESIGN: A cross-sectional examination of relationships between dispositional and relative optimism, threat avoidance and emotional well-being in 85 cardiac patients. RESULTS: Blunting, a measure of threat avoidance, was found to be associated with both optimism and emotional well-being, and the common variance was predictive of positive affect. As expected, this link was stronger in people with low self-efficacy for problem-focused coping. CONCLUSION: These findings support a defensive interpretation of optimism amongst patients with recently-experienced cardiac disease, particularly as the effect was more pronounced in the low self-efficacy subsample. We discuss possible explanations for these findings and implications for the study of coping with serious illness.

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