The psychology of self-regulation includes a focus on personal attributes that make us less vulnerable to stress and its adverse effects. This includes notions of optimism and competence. To what extent are optimism and competence the same thing? When does competence trump optimism or vice versa as we cope in life?
Optimism
Optimism is the stable belief that one will generally experience good outcomes in life. We believe things will work out for the best.
Perceived competence
Perceived competence is our expectancy that we can effectively interact with our environment. We believe we know what to do and can do what it takes to be successful.
Both psychological constructs are expectancies of achieving good outcomes in life. Both are related to enhanced well-being, better coping with stress and more effective self-regulation.
A key difference is that perceived competence has a focus on the individual's behavior in achieving success, whereas with optimism the expected positive outcome may not be behavior dependent - other factors could work to create the favorable outcome.
Do they function differently in our lives?
An article soon to be published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences explores the relation between optimism and perceived competence. The authors note that these constructs share similarities, but they may function differently in our lives. For example,
"In situations where performance is at stake, like exams or sport competitions, perceived competence could be more important than optimism, as performance can be easily perceived as being mostly under control. Meanwhile, in other situations, such as stress related to health outcomes, it is easier to perceive some issues concerning illness as not being completely under our control. Thus in contexts easily perceived as being less under our control, optimism could be more important than perceived competence" (p. 2).
They conducted a study over three years to explore the relation between perceived competence and optimism.
Their research and results
Using Spanish translations of key measures of perceived competence and optimism, they collected data from 237 undergraduate students (primarily women) with an average age of about 24 years. They used correlational techniques to explore the relations among the measures, including Canonical correlations to identify "latent" factors in the data.
Overall, they did find that optimism and competence beliefs are closely related, with all scales loading on the same latent factor which could be called "positive outcomes." However, they also found some structural differences in the scales that indicated that situations like exams, that could be considered under our control, are more related to personal competence; whereas health-related situations were more related to optimism.
Implications for self-regulation and procrastination
In my earlier post, I noted that our most recent research identified the important mediating role that competence plays in the relation between fear of failure and procrastination. To the extent that we feel competent, fear of failure does not predict procrastination.
The results reported by Dr. Fernandez-Castro and his colleagues suggest that there may well be a difference in the role of competence depending on the context. In situations that seem to be under our control, competence may be a factor that decreases our procrastination. However, in situations such as health, perhaps we need to think more about optimism and procrastination.
Procrastination and health?
What would procrastination have to do with health? Well, my colleague Fuschia Sirois has investigated treatment delay and found that procrastination on making appointments with the doctor, for example, does predict poorer health. What we don't know is how optimism might be involved. On the one hand, being naively optimistic that things will be ok might lead one to delay treatment seeking. On the other hand, not being optimistic or even being pessismistic might be related to delay. It's certainly food for thought and another study for our research group.
References
Fernandez-Castro, J., et al. (in press). Optimism and perceived competence; the same or different constructs? Personality and Individual Differences. (2009), doi:10.1016/j.paid.2009.01.041
