“It’s actually not that people are inherently optimistic or pessimistic we’re wired for both,” says Dr. respond to uncertainty and turmoil with an eye towards a brighter future. So why are Americans so optimistic? A growing number of psychologists and sociologists believe it’s the Western world’s distinct tradition of individualism-and Americans’ fervent embrace of it-that helps the U.S. stands out as an obvious exception among advanced economies. Where Pew’s analysis shows a general inverse relationship between GDP per capita and daily optimism, the U.S. According to analysis by George Gao of the Pew Research Center, Americans are far more upbeat when asked if they’re having “a particularly good day” than their peers in other advanced nations like Germany, the UK, Spain, France, and Japan. Recent data on national attitudes bears out the conventional views of American optimism. We’ve got the same innate optimism required to shape another American Century.” But where does this sunny confidence spring from? What is it about their culture that makes Americans so psychologically predisposed to optimism? “The challenges that this generation of Americans has faced, they're less dire than those that the Greatest Generation endured,” declared President Obama at the City Club of Cleveland on Wednesday. On Main Street, the average American thinks the country will improve in 2015, despite years spent caught in a cycle of frustration about the political and economic state of the union. CEOs predicted a 2015 with better jobs and better pay, despite the country’s sluggish recovery from the Great Recession. On Wall Street, the Dow climbed to a record high in November amid optimism about economic growth. But Americans continue to see life on the up and up despite the burdens of economic downturn, social and racial unrest and the specter of terrorism. are far less optimistic than those in poorer ones about the financial future of the next generation of citizens, in part because emerging and developing nations weathered the global financial crisis better than anyone expected. That Tocquevillian optimism has certainly dimmed with the Great Recession: People in advanced nations including the U.S. “Most Americans seem to believe that the future can be better and that they are responsible for doing their best to make it that way.” “Anyone visiting America from Europe cannot fail to be struck by the energy, enthusiasm, and confidence in their country’s future that he or she will meet among ordinary Americans-a pleasing contrast to the world-weary cynicism of much of Europe,” observed Irish philosopher Charles Handy, who retraced de Tocqueville's trek across the country in 2001. They all consider society as a body in a state of improvement.” Political and social observers have echoed this sentiment for centuries, enshrining optimism as an essential feature of not just the abstract ‘American Dream,’ but also of the social and economic institutions of American civil society. Alexis de Tocqueville, a French observer of American life at the beginning of the 19th century, observed that the Americans of his day “have all a lively faith in the perfectibility of man. But it also suggests that American optimism may now be waning in the face of contemporary political and economic challenges. Recent research bears out the stereotype, confirming that Americans really are more hopeful about the future than their peers in other wealthy nations. For centuries, visitors to the United States have been struck by the boundless optimism of its people.
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