Defensive pessimism, self-esteem instability, and goal strivings.

Defensive pessimism (Norem & Cantor, 1986a) is conceived as an adaptive motivational strategy employed in academic contexts. The present research investigates some potentially deleterious correlates of the defensively pessimistic strategy. We examined the hypothesis that defensive pessimists would have a relatively high ratio of negative-to-positive academically relevant self-thoughts, and these accessible thoughts would be related to high self-esteem instability. Mediational analyses generally supported this hypothesis. However, defensive pessimism-optimism differences in self-esteem seemed to partially account for the mediated effects. We also found support for the hypothesis that, relative to optimists, defensive pessimists would tend to be less oriented toward mastery goals and more oriented toward performance-avoidance achievement goals in academic settings. Results were discussed in terms of the processing correlates and adaptive trade-offs of defensive pessimism.