Daniel Kahneman says he doesn’t invest in stocks because he feels he is genetically wired to be pessimistic. In his book, The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds, Michael Lewis reveals that while Kahneman is a pessimist, Amos Tversky was not merely an optimist; he had willed himself to be optimistic, because he had decided pessimism "was stupid". So, here we have two brilliant psychologists who have done path-breaking work in the field of behavioural sciences. One seems to accept he is hard-wired to be pessimistic. The other makes a choice to be optimistic. This begs the question: is there a choice? Common thinking has most believing that people are naturally born pessimists or optimists. But according to scientists who have examined explanatory style — how you explain the events in your life — there’s hope for pessimists. Pessimists tend to believe that negative events are their fault. Optimists believe it’s a matter of circumstance. Someone with a pessimistic expl...
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