Can high optimism and high pessimism co-exist? Findings from arthritis patients coping with pain Yael Benyamini * Bob Shapell School of Social Work, Tel Aviv University, Tel-Aviv 69978, Israel Received 25 March 2004; received in revised form 12 August 2004; accepted 21 September 2004 Available online 8 December 2004 Abstract Data from 120 elderly osteoarthritis patients showed that dispositional optimism and pessimism inter- acted in their associations with the frequency of use of pain-coping strategies: participants higher on both dispositions reported more intense coping. Controlling for age, pain level, history of prior serious disease, or negative and positive affectivity did not affect the results. Possible explanations for the co-existence of high optimism and pessimism under certain conditions are proposed. Ó 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Optimism; Pessimism; Coping with pain; Negative affectivity 1. Introduction The construct of dispositional optimism, or generalized outcome expectancies, was defined by Scheier and Carver (1985) on the basis of their broader theory of self-regulation (Carver & Sche- ier, 1981). Extensive research has provided evidence of the benefits of being optimistic (Anders- son, 1996), yet there are two open debates that arose from inconsistencies in the findings: the dimensionality of optimism and pessimism and the independence of optimism from affect. The 0191-8869/$ - see front matter Ó 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2004.09.020 * Address: School of Social Work, Tel Aviv University, Tel-Aviv 69978, Israel. Tel.: +972 3 6409075; fax: +972 3 6409182. E-mail address: benyael@post.tau.ac.il www.elsevier.com/locate/paid Personality and Individual Differences 38 (2005) 1463–1473