Michanne, there is no pass or fail, but a score that points to whether you may be more or less optimistic or pessimistic. Most people would likely know generally where they fall, but the scores have some subtlety that can be intriguing.

Of course, Poppy Princess, the situations are contrived. What they are trying to get at is our usual way of explaining what happens. So, again, like Webgoji points out, Seligman seems to be getting at these preferences for how we explain stuff to ourselves indirectly.

There are six separate things the test questions measure: our explanations in three domains for good situations and bad situations (3 domains X 2 situations =6 subsets).

The permanence part of the scoring considers the duration we put on good and bad experiences. Optimists frame good experiences as long lasting and bad ones as temporary; pessimists take good experiences as short lived or the exception and bad ones as longer lasting.

The pervasive dimension looks at which parts of a person's life he or she considers affected by an experience. Optimists tend to seen good experiences as flooding across many areas of their lives and bad one as in a specific area; pessimists feel one or two bad experiences affect everything else; and one or two good experiences don't have "legs" that affect how they feel about other areas.

The final area or domain is personification, or whether some result is attributed to internal or external sources. This is likely the questions that appear to be inviting a lack of responsibility. Which, technically isn't exactly accurate: it is just that some people would place the responsibility outside themselves and others would accept it.

Optimists, it may not surprise, leave the responsibility for bad outcomes to others and keep the responsibility for good things to themselves; pessimists attribute good outcomes to outside sources and feel bad outcomes are their responsibility.

It was in the third area of Personalization that I pulled my score down from a higher level of optimism. After taking the detailed key in the book (the online site at Stanford only shows general or collated results) and looking at Seligman's logic and examples, I could agree I had some softness there.

As this book is for a general audience, Seligman didn't discuss his research design in detail but it is implied that this test went through rounds of validation.

As a personifier, I have felt great responsibility for far, far, more things than I have a strong influence on—like military spending, environment sustainability, and social fairness. It made the floor upon which I acted: my government is spending MY tax dollars; if I fail at recycling is there any hope others can succeed?; I must be the fairness I seek in others.

Going forward, this book and test has raised these ways of explaining to consciousness and thus closer to being an active choice for myself. I may think and feel my way into explaining something and still choose to carry on, or make a change, but it would no longer be a buried default or kneejerk reaction.

Revu2