• Mar 1, 2025 • Read in ~6 mins
A OnePoll survey* found:- 58% of Americans feel the glass was half-full.
- 16% of Americans feel the glass is half-empty.
- Strange fact: 48% of glass half-empty types felt they are more optimistic than pessimistic.
Optimism, the trait of glass-half full people, has many psychological and biological benefits:
- Optimists tend to live 11-15% longer than pessimists, and have an excellent chance of achieving “exceptional longevity”— that is, over an age of over 85 years.
- Higher optimism has links to a 35% lower risk of cardiovascular events and a lower death rate.
- Seligman’s study found optimistic swimmers used failure as a motivator to improve, while pessimists were more easily discouraged and performed worse after a setback.
So, being an optimist is a reliable way to increase your lifespan and life satisfaction, right?
Agreed. But there are also some disadvantages of being a glass-half-full person.
Read on.
4 Wrongs About A Glass-Half-Full Type of Person
Optimists expect things to go well in the future. And therein lies the issue — they may believe that their future will be favorable because they control its major outcomes.
Half-full glass people could be procrastinators, perfectionists, and have a strange thing called delusions of success.
1. Procrastination
Optimists may be a habitual procrastinators. Because they think the glass is already half-full, so they can delay filling it up now.
Procrastination is the deliberate postponing of actions or decisions. Procrastinators are overly optimistic about their ability to finish their tasks on time.
This is evident in people who are always late; they are overly optimistic about having too much time on their hands. It makes them see the time allotted unrealistically; a phenomenon called planning fallacy.
A glass-half-full person may decide to put off a task because they believe they would be better able to do it the next day. When people repeatedly postpone the same task several times, they develop a habitual overestimation of their future time limits.
2. Perfectionism
Excessively optimistic individuals may be perfectionists. They are the people who think an exactly horizontal, half-full level, shows the perfect balance between emptiness and fullness.
Big optimism, what the scientists call dispositional optimism, appears related to perfectionism. Big optimists believe that if lofty goals are achievable, then they are the ones to achieve them. It is a part of their success-seeking nature.
Success needs a pursuit of excellence, but this sprint of pursuit can become a perfectionist’s marathon.
People with strong perfectionism can go into depression at the perception, or anticipation, of failures (Frost et al., 1990).
Optimism doesn’t predict happiness. You can be happy now, and yet see the future as bleak. Or, you can be unhappy now, and yet see the future as bright.
3. Delusions of Success
The vast majority of business initiatives fail. The reason, as Dan Lovallo and Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman found, is that managers make overly optimistic projections.
See the following example of glass-half-full managers having delusions of success:
Organizational pressures and cognitive biases make them approve risky investments. They lull themselves into believing that the likely benefits far outweigh the possible pitfalls.
This type of forecasting is what psychologists call the planning fallacy, the same mistake that directs procrastinators. It makes the executives make decisions based on delusional optimism rather than a rational analysis of the risks.
Furthermore, the optimists may be deserters.
Optimists are more likely to leave projects midway, expecting others to fill in for them. Their thinking is like: since they have already done half the job, others can do the rest easily. While they can go do something else.
- By the way, what’s your personal definition of success?
What is the best thing that those who see the glass as half-full can do? Wish hard, then work even harder.
4. Overoptimism
Another problem with the glass-half-full people is that they tend to put a positive and optimistic spin on any given situation. This makes them prone to exhibit Overoptimism: When Optimism Stops Being A Happiness Magnet.
Overoptimism, or a pervasive optimistic bias, can distort reality and make a person feel special, gifted, and entitled. An example was Steve Jobs, whose success at Apple made him believe (until it was too late) that he could cure his cancer through herbal and acupuncture treatments.
Everyone who sees a glass as half-full is not overly optimistic, but the risk runs higher.
In his 2011 book Thinking, Fast and Slow, psychologist Daniel Kahneman said that “people tend to be overly optimistic about their relative standing on any activity in which they do moderately well.”
Benefits of Being A Glass-Half-Full Person
- Lewina O Lee (2019) found optimism can increase life span by 11 to 15%, and may be linked to a greater chance of achieving “exceptional longevity,” that is, living to the age of 85 or beyond.
- Alan Rozanski (2019) found that higher levels of optimism correlate with a 35% lower risk of cardiovascular events and a lower mortality rate.
- Laura Kubzansky (2001) found an optimistic style of explaining things may protect against the risk of coronary heart disease in older men. The study was aptly named, “Is the glass half empty or half full?”
- Alexander Vaiserman (2021) found that pessimism may be linked with faster telomere shortening, a biomarker of cellular aging, while optimism could slow down this process.
The glass-half-full people look for the silver lines in dark clouds.
How To Answer “Are You A Glass-Half-Full Person?”
Here’s the fun part! Let’s explore the question “Are You A Glass-Half-Full Person?” from 3 different perspectives.
• A physics guy’s take on it:
A glass on earth never remains empty; it’s always full. When it’s filled up to half with water, the other half contains air.
• Here’s how a minimalist sees it:
If the glass is half-full and serves your needs, then you may not need to fill it to the full? Why greed for more?
If the glass is half-empty, you may leave the empty part for others to fill. Why occupy space more than you require?
By the way, “minimalism” is a lifestyle of owning and keeping only those things that add value and meaning to your life, while discarding the rest.
• This is how a philosopher may argue:
The question posed is itself a false dilemma, and the answer is within, rooted in realism.
“Realism” is talking of unchangeable facts; e.g., the moon takes 28 days to go around the earth. “False dilemma” is when you wrongly box any issue within two-limit options, e.g., “If you are not with me, then you are against me” without considering the person might be a fence-sitter.
Final Words
25% of our optimistic temperament is genetic, that we inherit from our parents. We can’t much about it.
However, we can learn and shape the other 75% of our optimism through social mechanisms, such as attachments to friends and family (Meevissen, 2011).
√ Also Read: 3 Stoic Ways To Make Bold Choices (When Fear Holds You Back)
√ Please share it with someone if you found this helpful.