Discerning the role of optimism in persuasion: the valence-enhancement hypothesis.

The valence-enhancement hypothesis argues that because of their active coping strategies, optimists are especially likely to elaborate on valenced information that is of high personal relevance. The hypothesis predicts that as a result, optimists will be more persuaded by personally relevant positive messages and less persuaded by personally relevant negative messages than pessimists. It also predicts that when the message is not personally relevant, optimism and persuasion will not be related in this manner. The results of 3 studies support these predictions and supply evidence against several alternative hypotheses. The possibility that the observed effects are not due to optimism but to the confounding influence of 7 additional variables is also addressed and ruled out. Implications are discussed.