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Rediscovering confidence as a mechanism and optimism as a construct

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2015

Charles S. Carver
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL 33124ccarver@miami.eduhttp://www.psy.miami.edu/faculty/ccarver/ Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305
Michael F. Scheier
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213. scheier@cmu.eduhttp://www.psy.cmu.edu/people/scheier.html

Abstract

The target article asserts that resilience results from a generalized tendency to appraise stressful circumstances positively. Apparently unbeknownst to the authors, essentially the same idea has been advanced before and studied extensively from a different research perspective. This raises a broader issue: the critical need, when projects attempt to span disciplines, to fully examine work from all relevant backgrounds.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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