The Association between Optimism and Goal Achievement

Live Poster Session: Zoom Link

Max Fan

I’m Max and I am a first-year student here at Wesleyan. I’m from New York City and I’m considering a major in psychology. I’m interested in optimism because I consider myself a fairly optimistic person, and I want to see if this optimism has any real effect on whether or not I achieve my goals.

Abstract: It is a well known fact that our world consists of optimists, who tend to hope for the best, and pessimists, who tend to expect the worst. This project explored the association between optimism and goal achievement using data from the General Social Survey (GSS). It was discovered that there is a significant positive association between optimism and goal achievement, meaning the more optimistic someone is, the higher their rate of goal achievement is expected to be. Even after controlling for potential confounders, including age, yearly income, and effective goal pursuit, the relationship was still significant.

Data-Analysis-Poster