Optimism as a personal resource for coping in demanding situations

Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject Sport - Sport Sociology grade: 10 Otto-von-Guericke-University Magdeburg (Sportwissenschaft) course: Sportcoaching language: English abstract: AbstractObjective: 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.